With Their Own Two Eyes
by Wish-I-Had-A-Tail
Summary: Very slight AU: Kitty moves in to the mansion and treats Kurt in a way that evokes some painful memories. Gets better as it progresses.
1. Unexpected

Today, Kurt Wagner was excited. He paced his room back and forth several times, tail swishing idly behind him, the slick floors gliding beneath his feet, and thought of what he had been told the day before. Today, a new student would be coming. _Another one? Wunderbar!_ All the people he had met here so far had been wonderful, not one of them minding what le looked like, or the way he walked, or anything that even Kurt had always found himself resenting. So much better than in Germany. So far, life at this mansion had been amazing, and yet another student coming could only be a blessing. The sun shone into his room, and he felt the pleasant warmth on his face. He had prayed earlier already that he and the new student- the professor said her name was Kitty Pryde- would become great friends, he had straightened out random things at the mansion that no one else had as of yet bothered to straighten out, he had, feeling a little vain and eager to impress the new girl, put on a lightly different set of clothes from the ones he usually wore, and with only happy eagerness and slight anxiety, Kurt Wagner realized that he had nothing left to do… but wait.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Downstairs, the brown haired girl known as Kitty Pryde passed through the front doors of a huge mansion to find herself in the middle of a circle of six grinning faces. One of them she knew; the professor Xavier. But the other five were new. Still, she couldn't help but smile back. The red haired one sauntered up to her, closing the short distance between them and offered her hand.

"Hi, I'm Jean." Kitty took the offered appendage.

"Kitty Pryde. What, um, what do you, like… _do_?" Kitty asked, hoping that Jean would take the hint. She did.

"Telepathy. And telekinesis." She emphasized her point by lifting Kitty's luggage up into the air and then placing it back down with a flick of the wrist, so to speak. Scott was next, and gave no demonstration, followed by Ororo Munroe, who simply summoned a small cloud to water a fern. The Wolverine was the last to introduce himself, but even he gruffly extended his claws for a brief moment, before retracting them when he felt Kitty had gotten a good look. After they had made sufficient small talk for about fifteen minutes, Kitty let out a wide smile.

"It's so nice to meet you all!" she squealed, beginning to look forwads to starting a year here. "Um… _is _that all of you?" Scott answered.

"No, but there's one more of us home. KURT!" he called.

… no response.

"KURT WAGNER!"

"What can he do?" Kitty asked, still curious about all that related to mutants. Jean answered this time.

"Kurt's a teleporter. So don't be surprised when you see some smoke that smells-" BAMF

"Guten tag, Kitty." She heard from behind her. She turned, ready to meet another person, expecting to see a young boy behind the smoke that- as Jean tried to warn her- smelled of brimstone, expecting another grinning face.

She received one. The problem was, that this smile had fangs. She saw the fangs and then took in the whole terrifying sight before her. There was, in the place of a young boy, a monstrous apparition. He-it-he wore a sinister combination of a red shirt and black shorts, which let her see large amounts of indigo blue fur. The fur coursed over a lean, fit body that stood on paw like legs, two toes looking eerily like cloven hooves, a body that housed hands with not nearly enough fingers, and large ones to boot. She saw the face of the thing before her: A fanged evil grin with unnatural pointed ears, hair that was a similar colour to the fur, and two golden orbs for eyes that stared down into the very contours of her soul. The sheepish position of the boy went unnoticed as a tail sashayed out from behind.

Kitty screamed. The analysis that she had conducted of Kurt had taken, to her, less than a second, and the scream made all of them, especially Kurt, jump a little in surprise. She stumbled back a few steps, hand to her mouth, eyes wide in horror and Kurt slumped his shoulders like a weight had been fallen on them. His hands went behind his back, caressing each other in a method of self-comfort, and his tail went limp, nearly touching the carpeted ground. Kitty looked around frantically. Didn't they _see _it?? Instead, she saw mixed looks of apprehension, surprise, annoyance, and one distinct look of hurt that cause the other looks ot turn to ones of pity.

"Kitty." said the professor. She looked over at him, still dumbfounded. "I think that you should apologize to Kurt." It clicked in her mind, the gears turning slowly. That- that _thing_- THAT was Kurt. Kurt Wagner, whom they had just all told her about, the joker, the optimist, the comedian.

And she was terrified of him.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

"Jean, Scott." Said Ororo Munroe carefully, knowing she would be relieving some of the tension. "I have a lesson booked with you both. Come along." The three of them left and the silence grew tender as the professor decided to break it. Not directly. And Kurt heard, in his mind:

**Kurt, perhaps you could help Kitty unpack. Her room is the same one as Rogue's.** Kurt looked over at him, the look of hurt still on his featured, and then nodded too quickly, as if trying to shake some of his pain off.

"Keety, vould you like me to help you unpack?" Her eyes widened at the prospect of being along with him, but a stern look from the professor told her that if she said no now, she would begin her life here with a less than great start. _Yeah,_ she thought. _Like it's so great already._

She smiled as best as she could at Kurt, which was only a tight lipped grimace-smile and then answered quietly.

"Sure, um, Kurt." Thanks. She phased the rest of her bags in, and was about to pick them up when she saw Kurt go towards them. In a gesture of chivalry that he barely had noticed, he picked up all of the luggage and walked, beckoning her to follow. She ascended the stairs slowly after him, watching the tail swish ahs swirl behind him as he carried her luggage with ease.

When they arrived at her room, Kurt asked if she needed help sorting out the boxes. She accepted before she knew what she was doing, and awkwardly, the two tore the tape off the boxes, the adhesive coming apart with a roar, and Kurt took it upon himself to make conversation.

"So, Keety, was do you think of zhe mansion so far?" his nervousness and emotions thickened his German accent, and he cursed inwardly.

"Um, it's fine." This answer did not satiate Kurt, as it was so dismissive. He tried again, pretending not to be hurt by her scream.

"And the people?"

"They're, um, cool."

It continued on like this for a long time, until Kurt stopped talking.

_She screamed. _He thought. _She took one look at me and she screamed. Not at the teleport, no. At me. I didn't think mutants would be scared of other mutants. They said we would all be the same here… they said no one would scream…_

When they were done unpacking, Kurt left Kitty's room, the tension breaking instantly as his feet were out the door. She barely mumbled a thank you and then he was gone.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

_I should have known she would scream. I should have had her warned… No one expects something like me to greet them into their new home. _He thought as he made his way to his bedroom from the bathroom. His feet padded at the floors almost silently, and he overheard Jean talking to Kitty as he passed. Instinct and curiosity made him listen in, and he stood outside the door, tuning his sensitive hearing up.

"I think you hurt his feelings." Jean said.

"Yeah, but he totally, like… scared me!"

"Kitty, you don't even know him You should try."

"I know."

"He's really very nice and-"

"I _know_, Jean. I'm sure he is… just… it's hard when he looks like such a…"

Kurt froze. _Like a what?_

"Like a what?" Jean asked.

"Like a demon!" Kurt raced back to his room, refusing to hear any more. He sat down on his bed, curling into himself. A demon. It had been a while since he had been called that. He thought that part of his life was over. Lying down, he pulled the cover over himself, and all the bad things he ever thought about himself, all the bad memories flooded back as he fell asleep.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

_Four year old Kurti Wagner pulled at his mother's skirts. __"Bitte, mama!" __he begged. He wanted to come with her to the markets so badly._

"_Du bist zu jung, Kurti." __she replied. You are too young._

"_Ich bin fast f__ünf!" __he refuted. I am almost five! Giving in, Margali Szardos rolled her eyes, took her son by the hand and they made their way into the marketplace. She turned around and saw the little store she had been searching for and turned back to discover her son playing with the dirt on the ground._

"_Bleibst du hier kurze Zeit." __Stay here for a little while. Kurti obediently plantes himself on the ground, and began to use all five of his limbs to sculpt a castle out of the clay-like soil. He began to get the dirt in his fur, but he didn't care at the moment; he would wash it out later. With his hands and his feet, he brought the mounds of soil together and with his tail he smoothed out some of the edges until he had a roughly made cylinder._

_Then he heard a gasp. He turned quickly, limbs still on the castle, and saw a little girl, roughly his age, with two blonde braids looking at him from a distance with wide eyes. He smiled at her, unsure of what else to do, and her eyes- Kurti didn't think it was possible- widened even more._

"_Johann!" __she called, not taking her eyes off Kurti. When there was no answer, she turned in what must have been Johann's direction and called him again. __"JOHANN!" __Puzzled, Kurti watched as a boy with also blonde hair approached. Johann must have been the girl's brother._

"_Was?"__ he asked._

"_Schauen Sie Dort!"__ the girl replied. Look there! He turned in Kurti's direction and gasped._

"_Ein Dämon." __Kurti's blood froze and he went cold. He stood, golden eyes wide and looked around. Where was the demon? He should help fight it. They should get help. He turned back to the other kids' maybe he had been looking off in the wrong direction, but they still stared at him. Now there were moce. Another girl and four more boys._

"_Was sollten wir tun?" __one of the boys asked. What should we do? Kurti still could not see the demon but began slowly moving closer to the group of children._

"_Ergreifen Sie einige Felsen." __Grab some rocks. Kurti looked around himself, the castle forgotten, but there were no rocks in his vicinity._

_He moved towards the children, about to ask them if he could help, if he could also have a rock (or stick, as some of the boys had) to fight with, when he felt a blow to his face. He fell down, looking at the boys in shock and confusion, Tears of pain welled up in the child's eyes. __**Why don't they go fight the demon?**__ He thought. And as he began to pull himself up, the children pounced. He felt pain everywhere, and blood began to tangle in his fur. He closed his eyes, for fear of being hit in them, and was frozen with shock._

"_Damon!"_

"_Ungeheuer!"_

"_Missbildung!"_

"_Verlassen Sie viese stadt!"_

_Demon, they shouted. Monster, freak. Leave this town. Kurti cried out at the pain when one of them decided to attack his tail and tears mingled with blood. Then it dawned on him. They thought__** he **__was the demon._

"_Was? Ich bin nicht ein Dämon!"__ he shouted. Didn't they see he wasn't a demon? Didn't they __**see**__?_

_When a few adults ran over, parents of the children, one man patted his son on the head._

"_Guter Job, Sohn. Aber lassen Sie mich jetzt es töten." __Good job, son. Not let me kill it. The children dispersed, leaving Kurti to stare through tear-muddled ees at a man with a dagger raised above his head. He curled into a protective ball._

"_Jetzt ist die Zeit für Sie, um, Dämon zu sterben!" __Now is the time for you to die, Demon!_

"_NEIN! Ich bin nicht ein Dämon!" __Kurti wailed as the dagger plunged down, and he rolled away from it, receiving a slight nick on his side. As it was raised again, he heard his mother's voice, the voice of an angel._

"_Halten Sie in diesem Augenblick an! Sind Sie verrücken Leute?" __Stop right now! Are you people crazy? Kurti looked up at his mother, and tried to limp to her, as the children had gotten to his legs. She picked his up and indignantly began to walk away. He buried his face in her hair and sobbing, said to her:_

"_Sie dachten, dass ich ein Dämon war." __he said, clarifying and staring at the faces of the people as his mother carried him away. They though I was a demon. She hugged him tighter and then looked him in his eyes._

"_Kurti, hörst du mir, zu. Du bist nicht ein Dämon. Verstehst du?" __Listen to me. You are not a demon. Understand?_

"_Ich bin nicht ein Dämon." __He repeated, sniffling._

"_Denken Sie nie, dass du bist." __Never think that you are. He hugged her tighter then, still throbbing with pain._

"_Ich bin nicht ein Dämon." __He kept repeating to himself, a phrase, though he didn't know it at the time, he would become very familiar with in his life. I am not a demon. The thing was though, that before that day, Kurti Wagner had never thought that he was._

"Ich bin nicht ein Dämon." he whispered, waking up. He had not thought about that day in years, let alone had that nightmare. Knowing that he would now never be able to go back to sleep, Kurt Wagner sighed and thought, with a morbid relief, that it was a good thing he had dreamt about _that day._

_There were many worse days that could have been dreamt about._


	2. Chapter 2: Why did I make her scream?

The nightmare was fresh in his mind for the remainder of the night, and he could not go back to sleep. Kurt lay on his side, staring blankly at a wall and decided that he was going to have to get up since there was no chance of falling back asleep. It being early, or late depending on who was asked, he decided to pass the time with a shower and not limit his time today since no one else would be up for hours. He stripped down, climbed into the shower, turned the water on to a pleasant warmth, and proceeded to completely cover his body with shampoo, washing the cerulean fur. As he stood under the stream of water, watching the shampoo slide off of him, he reminisced on his nightmares.

_Guter Job, that kid's father had said. _Kurt thought as he turned up the heat in the water, sighing as steam rose up out from behind his curtain. _Guter Job indeed. Couldn't pick things up with my tail for a week after that. Still have the scar from the knife..._ Kurt looked down to his side, brushed away some fur, and examined the thin raised line on his hip. He cringed at touching it and smoothed out his fur, as if not seeing it would make it go away. _First of many..._ he thought, rather grimly. When he was clean, he climbed out of the tub, and proceeded to blow-dry himself. As the warm air coursed all throughout his body, he looked at himself in the bathroom mirror. Even through the thin layer of steam, he saw an oddly shaped blue creature, with a tail arrogantly making its presence known, and two yellow glowing orbs staring back at him. He turned away.

When he was dry, he brushed himself thoroughly, and methodically brushed his teeth as well. When his fangs gleamed white, he left the bathroom, satisfied, and went into his room, still plagued with thoughts akin to those from the shower. He went to his drawers, choosing something to wear. Red and black, he noted, had been a bad choice of colour. Not wanting to frighten anymore people today, he chose what seemed to be, in his mind, the furthest thing away from that demonic colour scheme. Green and white. Pleased with his warped logic, he put his clothes on, and noting that it was just slightly early for breakfast, decided to take heed of his stomach's pleading and teleported to the kitchen.

He teleported slightly above the ground, and fell silently and gracefully onto the kitchen floors, where the light from the sunrise ricocheted into a spectacular rainbow. However, Kurt stayed in the shadow, and made his way over to the coffee maker. Yawning, he pressed a button, and then heard a flurry of sound behind him. He turned immediately, more shocked than defensive, and saw Kitty Pryde holding a milk carton, posture slouched with the reluctance of someone who wishes to sleep. His eyes traveled up to her face, and the wide eyed made him catch his breath. She had on the same expression as that girl, as her group of friends, as all the people who'd ever seen him as a demon all his life.

Kurt froze, because the only thing that ever resulted for from that look in someone's eyes...

Was pain.

She visibly relaxed after recognizing him and shakily closed the fridge, but that did not help Kurt's irrational state of fear.

"Good... morning. " she mumbled.

"Guten morgen, Keety." He managed out, voice cracking. The machine beeped and he turned to it with wide eyes. He held it up to her awkwardly. "C-coffee?"

And then the entire mansion flooded in. Swarms of overlapping conversation could be heard as hungry teenagers and teachers entered the room, sparing a short greeting for the awkward pair. Kurt quickly found a seat, after pouring himself a cup of coffee, and Scott sat beside him, making passing comments about this and that.

"Kurt!" he snapped and Kurt jumped out of his stupor, turning to the older boy. "You all right?"

"Ja," he smiled. "Fine, Scott, danke."

He couldn't get that nightmare out of his head by science, the first class he shared with Kitty, and when he walked through the doors into the lab, he was hit by the scent of chemicals, and an objective for the day. He _would_ talk to Kitty.

He took a seat next to her, and she flashed him a brilliant smile. Surprised to say the least, he blinked and then smiled back, feeling it would be easier than he thought.

She leaned in casually, but came just a little too close to be accidental, and smiled at him again.

"So, like, wanna be my partner today? It's my first time and everything..."

"Ja, of course!" he said, now full on grinning. Kitty blinked.

"_Kurt?!_" she asked, dumbfounded. Kurt looked down at himself.

"Ja, last time I checked..." _Oh!_ He suddenly realized. _She has not yet seem me with my image inducer!_ "I'm vearing a hologram, Keety."

"Oh!" she exclaimed and then giggled. "I was really confused for a second. So, ready to do some science, partner?" she asked him playfully.

"Ja!" he replied, beaming at her. His plan was going better than he had thought. Maybe the scream was a fluke; maybe it _was_ just a teleport. Maybe he'd... misheard... when she called him a demon. He shook that off. Today, he would talk to Kitty, and she would see the real Kurt Wagner, and who knew? Maybe they would become good friends.

Throughout the class, they participated in small talk, and Kurt was growing happier by the minute.

"So, like, where did you grow up?"

"Germany. With the circus."

"The circus? Get _out!_ That is so, like, cool. What did you do?"

With the astute grandeur of a showman, Kurt puffed out his chest and proclaimed: "I was on the trapeze

with Die Zirkus Gelhaar as the amazing Nightcrawler! That became my code name."

"Wow, that's cool, I was pretty much born here..." and so they continued on like that for a while, to a

Point where there was almost no discomfort between the two of them, and all the memories of being

called a Demon had been pushed back to the deep contours of Kurt's mind when the class was over.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Before dinner, Kurt decided to put his time into reading a book, as he was in a good mood and had time

to kill. Hanging upside down from a support on his ceiling, his eyes scanned the pages, becoming

entranced by the words and the sudden knock on the door caused him to jump a little before calling:

"Come in!" the door was opened by Kitty, and he flashed her a smile, flipping down onto the ground.

She did not meet his eyes.

"Um the professor wanted me to tell you that dinner's like, ready in five minutes."

"Danke." He said and she left then. _Strange._ He thought. He placed his book down on his bed and,

feeling too lazy to teleport, walked to the kitchen, his merry whistling filling up the silence in the halls.

He bumped into Jean, and shot her a fanged, trademark grin of his, his good mood evident in his tail's

merry swaying and the warm glow of his eager eyes.

"Entschuldig." He said, bowing. Jean smirked and rolled her eyes, flipping a wave of her flame coloured

hair away from her face.

"How was your day, Kurt? Classes go well?" His grin stayed on his face.

"Ja, very well. I think zat me und Keety really made a connection today."

"That's great! I'll see you at dinner." When Kurt arrived at the dinner table, most of the students were

already seated and eating, and Kurt perched in the seat across from Kitty, hoping to continue on their

conversation. Throughout the entire dinner, he contributed wittily to the conversation, but Kitty did not

take her eyes away from her food. She gazed down shyly and munched as Kurt repeatedly tried to win

her attention. Some of his mood had faded fast by the end of the dinner, and then Kitty had asked, the

first thing he'd heard from her lips all dinner, so quiet he was the only one who heard.

"Can someone pass the salt?" Well, his hands were busy trying to satiate him with a piece of chicken he

was gorging at, and letting go would make it drop, so reflexively, Kurt wrapped his tail around the salt

and offered it to the girl.

"Thanks-" she said, but turning her head up, she saw the tail and once again, this time accompanied by

the break of the glass of a salt shaker, Kitty Pryde let out a scream. In that scream, he heard everything

that she wanted to call him, everything she must have thought.

Gently, he picked up the pieced of the shaker, leaving his food on his plate, and gingerly, he lowered

them into the waste bin.

"If it would be all right, Herr Logan." He said to the Wolverine, not looking at his face. "I'd like to be

excused."

Without anyone getting in a single word, there was a BAMF, and with the smell of brimstone and the

lingering of purple smoke, Kurt Wagner had gone to his room. He kneeled at his bed, and shed heavily as

he began to pray. What he prayed for exactly, he didn't know. But the simple action of running his finger

over the beads, and whispering words of worship calmed him. A knock at his door made him break out

of his trance, and without waiting for a reply, Scott came into his room.

"Kurt, I'm sorry... about Kitty."

"Nein, Scott, it's not your fault."

"No, Kurt, listen, she wasn't screaming cause if was _you,_ it was just-" Kurt looked up at Scott and gave

him a sad smile, one that faltered at the ends.

"Scott, it's all right." With a murmur, he whispered. "Pretty girls have the right to be afraid of monsters."

"Kurt." Scott said sternly, leadership leaking into the timbre of his voice. "Kurt, you're not a monster."

"_Sie sind nicht ein Dämon. Verstehen Sie?"_

"_Ich bin nicht ein Dämon."_

Kurt looked up at Scott, and the only thing visible in the blackness was the vague semblance of his fangs, and the glowing orbs of his now watery eyes.

"If I'm not a monster," he said slowly; narrating a fact of life, one he had learned at a young age many times. "Then tell me: Vy did I make her scream?"


	3. Chapter 3: Breakfast and nightmares

**Author's Note: Wow all you guys have been great in reviewing, ZeroGamer, talk-ape, IWishIHadAMuffin, FireShifter, sketzocase, GIZMAC, and Melody Night, thanks so much! Please keep reviewing, it really speeds me along =D This is my first fanfic so if this one goes well I think I might write another one =D but all in due time. Anyways, I'm going to start this one with some major elf angst, but then let's give poor Kurt a break, shall we? This takes place a month after Chapter 2. Also, I own nothing.**

_Eight year old Kurti Wagner pouted as he was sent to bed, arguing all the way up, but his slowly swaying tail conveyed just how tired he really was. He climbed the stairs slowly, after having said good night to his mother, and stepped into the small bathroom they had. He stepped on the stool in front of the sink, and looked at himself in the mirror as he did every night before falling into a sleep. He grabbed his toothbrush with one hand, his spit cup, which mama had carved to say his name in brisk letters, in the other, and squeezed out the thick green foam that was toothpaste onto his brush. Young Kurti brushed his teeth methodically, making sure to take extra time on his elongated fangs, and then after having counted to 100, he spit into the cup and rinsed it out, as he did every night to get ready for bed._

_As he climbed down from the stool, he heard a knock at the door and his ears perked up, listening to his mother answering it. He lay down flat, out of pure child's curiousity, pressed his ear to the cold floor and listened in, grinning at his own ingenuity. There was the familiar sound of the door shuffling open, and Kurti's interest peaked as they began to talk._

"_Ist das das Haus von Margali Szardos?"__ Is this the house of Margali Szardos? A man asked._

"_Ja, warum?"__ Yes, why?_

"Dame Szardos, wir sollen hier den Dämon töten, der hier lebt. Erlauben Sie uns einzugehen."_ Lady Szardos, the man said in a husky voice, We are here to kill the demon who lives here. Let us in. _

_Kurti froze, his tail becoming stiff in shock. Was the man talking about him? People had thought he was a demon before , but none had tried yet to _**kill **_him. __**Mama won't let him in. **__Kurti thought. And he willed his thoughts to go silent to hear his mother's reply._

"_Es gibt keinen Dämon hier. Reisen Sie bitte sofort ab."__ There is no demon here. His mother answered, sternly. Please leave immediately. Kurti smiled relaxing, and pressed his pointed ear harder into the tiled floor. But then, another voice, not husky, but higher and more agitated broke his calm._

"_Lügen Sie zu uns nicht, wir wissen, dass es einen Dämon hier gibt! Ein blauer, mit Giftzähnen eines Ungeheuers, der Schwanz des Teufels, und der glühenden Augen, die Ihre Seele nehmen können!" __Do not lie to us! We know there is a demon here, blue, with the fangs of a monster, the tail of the devil, and the glowing eyes that can take your soul!_

_Kurti widened his eyes, surprised. His eyes couldn't take anyone's soul! At eight, being the small, lean boy that he was, he couldn't, and never would dream of taking anything from these men. He was beginning to lose feeling in his ear from pressing into the floor so hard, but he couldn't pry himself off of it, needing to know what other things this man thought he could do. But Margali spoke next, her soft voice resonating authoritatively off the walls._

"_Deutlich irren Sie sich Männer. Ich weiß nicht, wer Ihnen über einen Dämon erzählte, aber ich hier nur mit meinem Sohn lebe, und er nicht zuhause ist. Jetzt frage ich Sie wieder: reisen Sie bitte sofort ab oder es wird Schwierigkeiten geben." __Clearly you men are wandering. I do not know who told to you about a demon, but I live here only with my son, and he is not at home. Now I ask you again: Please leave immediately or there will be trouble._

_Kurti beamed at his mother through the floor, and listened in for the telltale sound of the door closing and clicking. He listened intently, barely breathing from adrenaline, and heard, before that sound, the last words that the husky-voiced man got in to his mother that night._

"_Wir verstehen Dame Szardos. Deutlich sind Sie vom Dämon besessen worden, aber wir werden in diesem Augenblick abreisen, wie Sie fragten. Gute Nacht, Dame Szardos." __We understand, Lady Szardos. Clearly, you have been possessed by the demon, but we will leave right now as you asked. Good night, Lady Szardos._

"_Gute nacht." __She replied, and then Kurti heard the familiar sounds he had been waiting for. He slowly stretched out, arching his back into a bridge, and then stood back on top of his stool, peering into the mirror. He looked into his own eyes. __**Glowing, sure. **__he thought seeing the light from them bask the mirror the colour of gold, __**But I can't take anyone's soul. And I surely am not possessing mama. **_

_He opened his mouth and pressed his finger to a fang, careful not to draw blood. __**Giftzähnen eines Ungeheuers? Fangs of a monster?**__ Kurti took his tail into his hands next, feeling the spade witch and sway. __**Der Schwanz des Teufels? Tail of the devil?**_

_He stared himself in the mirror and chuckled to himself. __"Ich bin nicht ein Dämon."__ The men must have been confused. He was just blue, and furry... and had several other strange features to him, none of which were from the devil. But he was no demon. He smiled at the vague memory of his mother saying that to him, looking him in the eyes. With her comforting words in his mind, Kurti turned off the lights in the bathroom, and scampered off to his bed. He lay in it, shrugging off the man's words and closed his eyes, falling asleep._

_When he awoke, it was not daylight, there was no sun kissing his face good morning, and his mother was not gently nudging him awake. It was still black as sin outside, but what had woken Kurti up was the shrill sound of shattering glass. He was about to call out to his mother, when he felt a hand clamp down, __**hard, **__onto his mouth. His eyes widened in shock as the rest of the glass broke, falling like snow onto his bed, and men climbed into his room through the now shattered window. He tried to free himself, but felt a shard of glass being stabbed through his back, and he let out a cry, muffled against the man's hand._

"_Das ist der Dämon? Das ist so klein!" __That is the demon? One of them asked. Is it so small! Then the familiar husky-voice answered._

"_Lassen Sie die Größe des Dämons nicht Sie beschwindeln. Es will Ihre Seele stehlen. Greifen Sie schnell das Tau." __Do not let the demon's size trick you. It wants to steal your soul. Quickly, get the rope._

_**Rope?**__ Kurti thought, panicked. And so he reverted to repeating what he said to all of those who mistook his appearance for that of something else, trying to reason with them, saying the mantra his mother had drilled into his head. __"Ich bin nicht ein D- AAAAAH!!!" __Kurti's plea was interrupted as the "rope", something barbed and thick, was tightly fastened around both of his wrists. They were bound behind his back, and the men pinned him face down onto his bed. Someone held his mouth closed as his feet were tied as well, and Kurti tried to tell them, tried to say that he wasn't a demon, but through tears and the hand that covered his mouth, all that came out was a muffled: __"I bi' ick un D'on." _

"_Bringen Sie ihn im Sack." __Said the husky-voiced man. Put him in the bag. Kurti squirmed against his sharp wires, feeling the blood run down his arms and palms as they dug into flesh. Someone brought a large sack and held it open as the other men pushed Kurti inside. A portion of the glass debris fell in with him, and Kurti began to cry as he got shards of glass in his back. He looked up towards the men as one of them closed the bag of from the light, tying it tightly in twine, leaving Kurti in a darkness that was too black for even his advanced eyes to see clearly in. One of the me neasily lifted the bag, and the boy inside kept crying._

"_Ich bin nicht ein Dämon." __He wailed, feeling warm wetness on his back and legs, where the glass was stabbed in. _

"_Halt den Mund!" __the high voiced man commanded. Shut up! He put the bag down and kicked it angrily, causing Kurti to fall onto his side in the darkness. Suddenly, Kurti felt that he was moving. Being dragged on the ground. He couldn't see how or why, and breathed heavily in the black bag, the plush fabric shooting each hot burst of air back into Kurti's face. And then, as he was lifted again, he felt that he was being carried. He cried again, loudly, and the man, afraid Margali would awaken, grew agitated._

"_Ich sagte, Dämon ruhig sein!" __I said, be quiet, Demon! Kurti howled, frightened and in pain and let out an agonized wail._

_Someone kicked him again. When the bag was dropped, a sure sign he was at his destination, Kurti screamed, partly from pain, partly for his mother to hear, and, using flexibility that was almost inhuman, got his tied arms in front of his body instead of behind it, and used the barbs that were on it to cut a hole in the fabric, assisted, of course, by his tail. He stared through the little hole at the man in front of him, who wore a cross around his neck that was identical to Kurti's own. He watched the man step forwards in the night, eyes gleaming with purpose, and Kurti saw him raise a pitchfork above his head._

"_Heute ermorden wir einen Dämon!" _Today we slay a demon! As the pitchfork slowly began to come down, Kurti shouted, tears streaming down his face, back and legs dripping blood,

"_ICH BIN NICHT EIN DÄMON!"_

And woke up. Kurt Wagner sat up in bed, and, breathing heavily, rubbed the sleep and nightmare from his eyes. He took a short shower, trying to chase that memory out of his head, and absent-mindedly fingered the thin lines where the glass had left a mark, and the slight roughness around his wrists and legs that were hidden, along with all his other scars, behind lush indigo fur. He then touched the three raised, circular scars that jotted out on his side, each an equal distance from each other. Kurt turned off the water and climbed out, wrapping himself in a towel.

He silently crept the dark halls, once again too early for breakfast, and sighed to himself. It had been a month since he had met Kitty, and in that time, he had learned a few facts about her. One: He had learned that Kitty Pryde was in fact, very pretty. Two: He had learned that she talked to him fine when he wore his image inducer but barely said a word to him without it. Three: He had learned that if she seems to be the only one to volunteer to cook, he should quickly volunteer as well, if only to protect himself from the cooking of hers that seemed to be chemically impossible results. Four: He had learned that she still called him a demon behind his back. And five: He had learned that he was just the slightest bit afraid of _her_.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

_At least she hasn't screamed in a month_. He thought as he shimmied his way into a t-shirt. When he was dressed, Kurt turned off his alarm, which went off the minute he stepped into his room, slyly teleported downstairs, on top of the fridge, and, hanging on with his tail to the top of it. Kurt Wagner had a surprise planned for everyone today, and agilely, he leaned over and pulled out the necessary ingredients to make crepes. He stacked them all neatly on the counter, after which he flipped off of the fridge, despite there being no one around to witness his display, and looked at his collection: 20 eggs, 2 ½ cups worth of milk, 2 ½ cups worth of water, and 10 tablespoons worth of butter. When he measured out flour and salt as well, Kurt giddily began to mix ingredients, using his mother's special timing, and when they were finished, placed them neatly on the table in a stack, and, feeling the need to show off, drizzled chocolate sauce carefully over the top one, spelling out: Guten morgen, X-men.

When he had set the table eloquently, a plate standing royally in front of every chair, with a yellow tablecloth underneath, he had placed spoons, forks and knives formally next to each one of them, and placed a glass nicely at the side of each. Grinning, Kurt checked the time, and listened for the sounds of alarm clocks going off. He waited...

BEEP BEEP BEEP

There was Evan's...

BEEPITY BOOP BEEPITY BOOP BEEPITY BOOP

Rogue's...

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE....

And Jean's.

Kurt sprung into action, knowing full well that no one knew that he was making breakfast, and quickly scooped out various scoops of different types of ice cream into bowls, placing them on the table, he sliced a few bananas and arranged them in an intricate spiral on a flat china plate, and he placed milk and juice on the table delicately. Now all that was left was for him to present it to them. At the prospect of a show, however brief, Kurt grinned mischievously. He turned off the lights, and then proceeded to hang upside down, resisting the urge to eat all the food and ruin the beautiful display. He stayed perfectly still, as not to ruin the surprise, and when the X-men came in, and turned on the lights, they all jumped a little at Kurt's strange positioning, and then took in the sight before them, crooning with collective gasps of awe.

"Whoa... Kurt, you did this?" he grinned, the nightmare almost forgotten.

"Ja."

"Haha, it says guten morgen on the crepes."

"Oh, wow, these bananas look awesome."

"This looks really cool." Kurt glanced up. That last one was from Kitty. Smiling, he blushed.

"Ja, well... Danke Schoen, Kätzchen." As the X-men began to eat, Kurt received various commendations from the team, as well as the teachers. Kitty, though, ate ravenously and her eyes were wide and twinkling with obvious delight.

"Wow... Kurt, these are like... _amazing._" She raved. She was talking to him. Kurt did not have his inducer on, and she did not look him in the eyes as she praised his culinary talents, and as she used her knife, Kurt inexplicably got a little apprehensive. _But still,_ he decided, _It's a start._

As breakfast ended, the dishes were cleared away by everyone but Kurt, who was forbidden to help as he had made such a lavish meal. He had made some progress with Kitty today; he knew it, but it was his growing fear of her that bothered him. _Maybe if I make some physical contact with her, she'll warm up to me. I haven't even stood within two feet of her since we met. But why am I so paranoid about her? Ach! This girl has thrown me out of order._

"KURT! LET'S GO!!!" shouted Rogue from her seat in Scott's car, her southern accent prominent in the heat of her irritation. "IF YOU AIN'T HERE BAH THE TAHME AH COUNT TO 20, THEN BAD THINGS ARE GOING TO HAPPEN TO CERTAIN ELVES! 20... 19... 18..." No Kurt.

"3...2...1..." BAMF.

And he was there next to her in flash of smoke, causing her to jump and look at him in annoyance.

"Now whah, Kurt Wagner, did ya wait till ah was at the last second to do that?" she asked as the car began driving.

"Because, meine Schwester," he grinned, turning on his hologram. "I love to hear zhe sound of your voice." She rolled her eyes. When they arrived at the school, the teens scurried out of the cars and ran to their first classes. Kurt stared at the clock all day, unable to focus, passing through English and Math without having paid attention to any of the words the teachers said. For Kurt today, the lesson was a monotonous droning in the background to the loud ticking melody of the second hand and to the constant echo of his own thoughts. But when he came to gym, the easy zoning out was sure to end. Their teacher stood in front of them, dictating the next unit. He handed them each a small black bag.

"These," called out the teacher, in a shrill suddenness that made Kurt come to attention. "are your new school ordered swim trunks. Today, we will be starting swimming. So everyone hand in all valuables so I can keep them here as they may get wet." The teacher paced around with the black sack, which briefly brought Kurt back to his nightmare, but then stopped directly in front of him, presenting to Kurt a new nightmare entirely. Kurt shuddered off the eerie semblance of the black bag and focused on the teacher.

"Mr. Wagner." He ordered. "Take off your watch."


	4. Chapter 4: Out of the woods

**Hey everyone: To clarify for the rest of the fanfic, Jemaine is Kurt's childhood friend, not Margali's daughter and Stephan is Margali's son, he just wasn't there for the other flashbacks. =P. There is a reference in here from Uncanny X-men issue 416, see if you can find it. And I am outraged at Evo's changing of Toad's real name, so for the purpose of this fanfic, he will be using his original name. Big thanks go out to my reviewers who have really kept my spirits high! Please keep reviewing! Chapter 5 will be up soon. Anyways, Enjoy.**

The teacher held out the black bag, and Kurt stared at it, unblinking, as if it was a bottomless pit threatening to suck him inside. He gulped.

"W-was?"

"I said, remove your watch." Kurt resisted the urge to teleport away as he noticed the four brotherhood boys looking at him knowingly. Mortimer Toynbee was openly grinning, slightly yellow-tinted teeth bared unabashedly, eyes twinkling with anticipation of Kurt's potential humiliation, and as accompaniment, the three other brotherhood boys behind him gave Kurt malicious smiles, which was not helping him in thinking of a suitable excuse.

After searching the gym frantically for the inspiration to a miraculous excuse, Kurt gave up and merely shook his head, resigned. This resulted in snickers from the boys standing in the gym, causing Kurt to blush a rich violet under his hologram. The teacher, Coach Garner, raised one thick eyebrow.

"No?"

"Um, nein." _Snicker, snicker, snicker._

"And may I ask why not?" Kurt glanced down.

"Because I... um..." _Scheiße. What possible reason is there not to go swimming?_

"Es tut mir leid, I'm sorry, Herr Garner. But I am afraid I must decline." The teacher sighed, frustrated over what must have seemed like adolescent insolence, and rubbed a hand down his face, as Mortimer and Lance turned red from suppressing laughter and possibly derogatory insults they had prepared.

"Kurt..." Coach Garner said. "This is your last warning." Again, growing more dejected by the minute, Kurt hung his head as he shook it, but Garner was in his peripheral vision.

Kurt barely saw him lunge for his watch, but there was enough time for him to whip his hand away. There was just enough time for Kurt to give a look of abject horror, and then Kurt did what he knew he would eventually have to do, if here instead of Germany.

He ran... once again.

"DETENTION AFTER SCHOOL, WAGNER!" was heard from behind him as well as confused snickering as Kurt launched himself against the door, and ran out of the school grounds as fast as he could on two legs, until he found his way into the woods and ran deep into the contours of the forest. The trees whipped past his face, calming him, and the dirt felt familiar under his feet. When he was deep enough into the mass of thick green flora for no one to see him, he turned off his hologram, dropped down to all fours and began to hurtle through the foliage naturally. He relaxed a little at the feeling and ran a few minutes more, enjoying being able to be himself without anyone there to see. At a certain point, though, he stopped, climbed up into a tree, and perched in a branch, lost in his own thoughts.

_Herr Professor is going to be not pleased with me when he finds out how I handled that. _Kurt sighed. How had he gotten himself into this mess?

_Oh, that's right. By being born blue._ He flipped his tail around behind him, unashamed at the moment. _Any other student would have taken off his watch, changed into the swim trunks, and have finished the class normally without having to worry about hiding his tail. Verdammt tail... Tail of the devil..._

_Der Schwanz des Teufels._

He groaned in frustration that the memory found its way back into his mind, and leaped to another tree, perching at his newly claimed spot now as he tried to lift his slightly dampened mood. He looked at his odd hand for a moment, watching the three large, fur cloaked fingers tint yellow in the sheer gold light of his eyes, and scrutinizing, look intently as in a flicker, it became pale, smooth, and the two fingers split into four. If he didn't keep his fingers too far apart from each other, in an eternal star trek reference, he himself might never be able to tell the difference between his own hand and say, Scott's.

That was why Kitty liked him better like this. There was no semblance of a strange, deformed monster in these five, clear appendages. Like this, he was a boy, no demon.

_...Dämon._

_...Ungeheur._

_...Missbildung._

Not looking like this.

Kurt checked his watch, actually looking at the time, and then put his hand down. He still had about an hour and a half left until detention. He decided right there that he would not skip it; it was not worth getting into more trouble. What would he be missing out on with his friends while he sat in that room? Probably not too much.

_If anything interesting happened, they'll all tell me when I get home. _

He turned his watch back off and finally felt like he had gotten his earlier nightmare out of his head. But he somehow knew that more would soon follow. There was a certain theme to these nightmares, these memories of the worst events in his life; it was quite clear to see, and once one was unrepressed, he knew from experience that the rest would quickly follow like a continuous stream, one leading in to the next. Kurt jumped again, easily hitching onto a branch at the top, already virtually impossible to find, hidden amongst the shadows of the branches.

_Why am I starting to have these dreams again __**now**__? I haven't thought about them this often in such a long time. First that one a month ago... and the one last night... It's probably best not to be alone with my thoughts for a while. I don't want to think about them right now..._ With an odd sort of peace, Kurt Wagner made the best out of the time he had left to himself, smiling with a sort of tranquil peace.

"Unser Vater wer Kunst im Himmel. Geheiligt, Ihr Name sein..."

And prayed.

When it was time for him to go to his intended punishment, his stomach was rumbling as he had skipped lunch to sit solitarily at the tops of the trees, so he teleported to the parking lot of the school, and walked inside from there, not wanting to give in to the temptations of food he might pass if he was to walk. He passed numerous people in the hall, including Kitty, who gave him a tiny smile and then looked away shyly, hair falling in her face as she did so. He returned it with a wide grin, and his disposition drastically improved as he walked to the detention room, almost strutting.

He passed Evan in the halls and the boy greeted him casually, bulging backpack slung over his shoulder."

"Hey Kurt."

"Hallo, Evan. How's it happening?"

"Fine. Coming to rent the movie for tonight?" Kurt cringed. He** did** want to come to rent the movie, or **someone**, he didn't know who, but there was always someone, would suggest a horror movie, and then three would be chosen, causing either the inevitably long debate over which, or causing everyone too watch all three, going to sleep at four in the morning.

"Nein, I can't." He shrugged. "Detention."

"Oh, man, that sucks. What for?"

"I had swim. Vouldn't take off my vatch." Evan game him a sympathetic nod of his head, before continuing down the halls.

"Well, see you at the mansion. Movie starts after dinner, and dinner's at seven. Don't be late!"

"Ja, Tschüs, Evan. Bye." He pulled the door open and stepped inside, seeing Coach Garner sitting at the desk at the front, watching him with beady black eyes.

"Take a seat, Mr. Wagner." Kurt sighed.

"Jawohl."

Taking a seat, he winced as his tail, which he had lazily tucked into his pant leg, curled around his leg, began to ache in protesting pain and twitch involuntarily, searching for escape. He shifted some to take the pressure off of it, as he could not perch as he usually did on the chair, and it settled down. Kurt absently pulled out a piece of paper and a pencil, thinking he might as well do **something**__to pass the time. Considering he was the only person in the room, there wasn't much chance for socializing throughout detention.

Sitting there, sullen and bored, Kurt tapped the paper impatiently, not knowing what to do, and Coach Garner mumbled to himself, quietly, but loud enough for Kurt's sensitive ears to catch what he said.

"Dumb kid, don't see what coulda been so bad if he'd given me that damn watch..." Kurt clenched his teeth, and his eyes glowed molten gold fury behind his disguise. The light was still there, it just didn't show up on the hologram. It projected through the paper though, and Kurt looked away from it.

_No, Herr Garner. You __**don't**__ know. You haven't the slightest idea._

Sitting there in that chair, Kurt watched the clock and began to wonder if the hands went backwards when he wasn't looking. So far, it had only been eight minutes. If he had still gone to school in Germany, then his teacher would have understood...

_Ah, ja. Frau Kriemhilde. She was the best teacher there was. She was always nice to me; she let me wear my trench coat in class, she understood if I needed to run on four legs instead of two when we did gym, she always tried to punish the kids who picked on me... I wish Frau Kriemhilde was teaching here. She came to visit me after she took our class out for my ninth birthday..._

Kurt banged his head on the desk. He would be thinking about that all day now, and not the fun ppart when Frau Kriemhilde visited afterwards. And so, running out of options to p[ass the time, Kurt began to count the windows.

_Ein, Zwei, Drie, Vier, Fünf, Sechs, Sieben, Acht..._ Acht. Eight, Eight windows.

_Well, that was short-lived._

He picked up the pencil, holding it awkwardly in his unique hand. So he began drawing idle doodles on his paper, hoping to pass the time mindlessly. He settled on drawing a badly drawn version of himself, as Kurt was not the most artistic. This was proved when the crude self-portrait took him the rest of the detention.

As he drew the tail, putting extra careful effort into it as it was his most-liked trait, he stared at the picture. It had all his basic qualities, the ears, the pathetic attempt at drawing fur, the tridactyl hands, the strange digigrade feet, the tail...

He didn't look like a human. But he didn't look like any of the other mutants either.

_Mainly because they mostly look like humans._

So what was he?

_Ich bin nicht ein Dämon._ He thought. But the memories he had swiftly ruled that out as a certainty.

"_You are a mutant, Kurt." _ He remembered the professor telling him. So then why did other mutants not recognize him as one of their own? This line of questions didn't make Kurt angry at anything; who's fault was it he was blue? It just made him feel a little bit isolated.

"Detention time is over, Mr. Wagner." He heard, the six words he needed to snap back to reality. Kurt stood up happily, excited at the prospect of buying some food at long last and at the later movie(s) he would be watching.

"Danke, Herr Garner." He stood up and walked away, leaving the doodle on his desk (it was too badly drawn for anyone to link it to Kurt Wagner, foreign exchange student, and it would probably be thrown out by the janitor before the day was out), and was out the door when he heard Coach Garner's voice.

"Hey Wagner," he called. Kurt turned around to see the coach holding up his doodling.

"Ja?"

"What is this?" he indicated the doodle of Kurt. Kurt looked at the picture, and then back at Coach Garner, giving a little wistful smile.

"I don't know."

When he knew he was alone in the hall, he teleported behind one of his favourite burger places, and then walked to the door, counting the money he had in his wallet.

"Can I help you?" the girl at the counter asked. Kurt had to smile. It was a girl he knew, from school. He couldn't remember her name, but she had Light brown coloured hair which she streaked with mauve highlights. They actually looked good against her tanned skin, huge brown eyes, and friendly smile.

"Hi,-" he looked down at her nametag quickly, "-Taisa." _Hmm, greek name. _ She smiled and mouthed "Hi, Kurt."

"Can I have three burgers, two fries and a large coke?" he asked, and she arched her eyebrows, seeing how he was ordering enough food three people for himself but then said "Sure." And charged him.

When she gave him the food, he thanked her and she winked. Kurt walked back to the mansion, and once inside, turned off his watch with his tail, as his hands were full of food, and teleported to his room, ravenously hungry by now. He looked into the bag that held his food, and noticed something on the side.

_555-5878_

_~Call me!_

_Taisa 3_

As he ate, Kurt felt a growing warmth in his chest. Girls liked him when he wore his hologram. Maybe he would call Taisa... That was quickly dismissed as he tore into his burgers like one possessed. As he ate, he tried to ignore the fact that the principal would most likely talk to him within the next week for skipping the three classes after gym, and wolfed down his food. He sent the remainder of the day in his room, his earlier thoughts of Frau Kriemhilde making him feel strangely homesick, and when he was called down for dinner several hours later, turned on the watch and was determined to rant about it. He teleported to the kitchen, and took a seat across from Kitty, like he usually did.

As they ate, Kurt started up the conversation, asking if anyone else was homesick. Surprisingly, and much to Kurt's liking, it was Kitty who piped in about homesickness, and the two began talking about their respective experiences with the mansion away from their family. As people around smiled at the two getting along so well, something they knew Kurt had wanted since she came here, Scott was a little anxious.

"Kurt, man, you can turn off your watch, you know." Kurt looked at him, and his smile faltered a little, for a split second, before he patched it up again and blinked.

"No, Scott, I'm ok. Danke." Instantaneously, he turned to Kitty again, marvelling at his newfound conversationalist, but Scott was apprehensive.

_**What's wrong?**_ Jean asked him from across the room, in his head.

Scott looked back over at Kurt, who seemed very happy.

**Nothing, It's just... Kurt seems to be more comfortable like this right now, and it's kind of making me uneasy.**

_**More comfortable than what?**_ Jean asked.

**More comfortable... than in his own skin. **


	5. Chapter 5: Not that easy

**PLEASE ACTUALLY READ **

**A/N: Thanks to all of my reviewers again! Your praise and/or advice is really helpful to me so keep it up! Also, I want to say that I'm going on vacation to visit a bunch of relatives in Israel =D and this is going to be the last update for two weeks. (if there's no update by the 21****st****, I'm gone) There'll be more as SOON as I get back (which is the 4th) so by the 6****th**** there will be another update. Please don't stop reviewing after the two weeks. So, enjoy. **

**KITTY**

A little over a month ago, I accepted that I was a mutant. I accepted, slowly at first, but then rather willingly, that I could pass through solid objects and walk on air like some sort of ghostly spectre. It didn't bother me much, except for when I couldn't control it. I would be dropping things through my hands, waking up halfway inside a couch, phasing through my shoes instead of putting then on... and various incidents of the sort. I achieved a very basic level of control over my newfound skill over a few weeks; I really had no other choice. And soon I was at a stage where I was more or less able to control it when I focused. But I learned quickly that there was no one to ask, no one to talk to about it. And that was very difficult. _Hey mom, have you ever felt like you're suddenly sinking into the floor... literally? _Yeah right. My life suddenly became a lot easier, for obvious reasons, when Professor Charles Xavier rolled up to my door and graciously offered me a place at his school _for_ mutants. I accepted gladly at the prospect of other mutants like me, and was there before I could blink, eagerly meeting all the new people, shaking their hands with a twinkle in my eye.

And then I met the demon.

Naturally, my reaction was to scream. And I followed my natural reaction; I screamed and backed away into a corner with my eyes wide and gaping. How could I not? Who wouldn't, when staring into a face like that? The fangs gleaming dangerously and his eyes... his eyes looked like they were going to take my soul... So, I decided right there that my life here at this mansion would be with one small obstacle; I would have to avoid the demon. Then things started to get more complicated. The demon was not this badly received by all the other occupants, and soon I was being informed that I had hurt his feeling. So fine, I had thought, let the demon- Kurt, have hurt feelings. He just scared me too much for me to think any thing otherwise. I couldn't think about his feelings whenever I got near him. The only thing I could think of then was the closest escape route from here to my room. He looked unholy, frightening, with his dark fur and fangs and all that, despite the vivid cross around his neck. So I merely avoided him, trying not to come into contact with this monster that all the wonderful occupants call friend.

But that was too easy. And my life is never easy. Kurt, the demon, this monstrous, _freaky_ creature, was **nice.** He had made me laugh in science class; he had carried on a lively conversation, and the fake image of him, the hologram, looked good- looked _right_. Like it matched his personality. He was so peaceful, pure, charming. And for a moment, I had forgotten that Kurt Wagner was the same demon I was afraid of, and it was so natural, so easy to talk to him, to laugh with him to- though he was completely oblivious- flirt with him a little. But when I saw him again, hanging upside down by that tail, that creepy, unnatural tail, half invisible from shadow, I immediately had forgotten that he was the boy I had been flirting with.

I could imagine my mother if I'd ever told her about Kurt, the nicest boy in the mansion: "Is he a nice Jewish boy?" and my response. "Um, no mom, he's a catholic demon." **That** would be interesting. Anyways, the second time I screamed, and he teleported away in that awful cloud of purple sulphurous brimstone, I felt a little bad about it. It quickly passed to recurring fear of him, but it was there. That annoying, slight feeling of doubt, guilt, and even some empathy. I quickly gave it up.

But then the crepes. Oh! The _crepes._ Those were miraculous. I nearly rolled my eyes back in my head upon feeling those on my tongue. And he arranged then so artfully, like a true culinary master. He had spent time and care on these, and it showed. I couldn't look at him still, but I felt I had to make my praise known. I could feel his smile light up the room when I did, and that too was bothering me. Why does a demon have such a pure, bright smile, anyways? Even with the fangs, it always looked genuine, brilliant, somehow... _unpolluted._

It was getting hard to put my feelings of the demon into perspective. Was I terrified? Yes. Did I like talking to him? Yes, very much so. Did I think him some sort of monster? Definitely. Was he by far the nicest guy at the mansion, let alone the easiest to talk to?

Without a doubt.

Now, we were going to watch a movie; I didn't know which, Kurt didn't know which, and it didn't matter. No one would really be paying 100% attention to it anyways. He wore his hologram, which made him my best friend there almost immediately. It was just him, without the fur, the fangs, the eyes, the _tail_. But what a difference it made! We had been talking about homesickness, as he had felt a pang of nostalgia earlier, and I happily contributed.

"If you, like, miss your mom so much, why don't you just, like, call her?" I asked. He looked over at me, an eternal smile plastered over his face.

"It costs a lot of money to call all zhe vay to Germany, and she is not zhat rich. I try not to call unless zhere's somezhing special happening. Like... a birthday."

"Well, when's your birthday?" to my great amusement, he thought about it before answering. And when he did, I merely sat there and blinked, unsure of whether it was one of those jokes he sometimes made that no one understood the humour in.

"Kurt, that's in three days." His holographic brown eyes widened terribly, and it was all I could do not to laugh at his remarkably incredulous expression.

"WAS?!" He teleported away, leaving the thick purple smoke draping over me like a curtain. I made no effort to brush it away when more appeared, and Kurt, still wide eyed, materialized next to me. Slowly, ever so slowly, his lips spread in a contagious grin, and I felt myself wanting to grin too.

"You're right, Kätzchen!" he bounced in place happily as I rolled my eyes, playing with the plush of the carpet beneath me, and letting a small smile tug up my lips.

"Guys!" he called to the group of people behind me. They turned to Kurt curiously.

"Yeah, Kurt?"

"Mein birzday ees een zhree days!" That last part was so unusually thick accented that I had to laugh, surprising even myself. His accent usually thickened when there was an emotional aspect to what he was saying and it was not unclear that the German boy was happy. Evan sighed and rubbed his temples, which made me laugh again.

"We know, Kurt. We all remember." He chose his words carefully. I looked over at Kurt to see what his reaction would be. Surprisingly, his eyes just barely teared up.

"You do?" he said with the strong emotions of a child who'd just been reassured again that Santa was real. I stifled a snigger at the quick change of emotions that were so obviously shown on Kurt's face and watched Evan's reaction to it. He, too, seemed startled at Kurt's rapid change, but then he smiled and slowly explained.

"Of course, fuzzy. This is your first birthday that you're spending here, instead of at home with your family. So we're going to make it awesome."

'"Danke, Evan." He beamed. And so, due to the contagiousness, I beamed. As everyone came into the room, Kurt cleared his throat.

"So, vat are we vatching?"

The movie title was forgotten approximately forty minutes in as everyone sat in deathly silence, watching a frightening monster, which had been borne of a mad experiment on an unsuspecting human, howl disturbingly and scavenge for food in a nearby river, roaring at its own reflection. It had a semblance to Bigfoot, and seemed to have acquired an animalistic nature in the experiment, but still had the ability to speak and maintained his human intelligence. (Which was not unheard of in these man-thing* movies) Hunters had found him now, and I watched, perturbed, as they beat the monster in an effort to subdue it. It was trying to explain to them but it wasn't working, to say the least. I cringed at the disturbing sight.

"Poor thing." Kurt said out of nowhere. I looked at him in surprise to see that his face was solemn with pity.

"Like, _why?_" I asked.

"Vell, look at it! It's getting beaten by all zhose hunters." He flinched at the screen. "Ach, that looks painful."

"Well, like, it's all wild and out of control."

"He didn't do anyzhing wrong."

"They're scared of it, and just want to defend themselves!" I argued, stubborn, inexplicably opinionated about this.

"Vat are zhey defending themselves against? This unlucky guy?" I noticed that the professor, along with Jean and a few other select people, were paying attention to our conversation like it was the entertainment instead of the movie being debated about.

"Well, like, look at it!" I said, gesturing to the savage thrashing object on the screen. "You see something as freaky that, your first thought, is, like, to kill it!"

The temperature dropped a few degrees in the room, but I was feeling too hot-headed to even notice.

"I know." He whispered. For a moment, there was tense silence, and then Kurt asked his next question quietly, ducking his head, almost cowering at me.

"So if zhat was you, Keety. If you had seen him-" he gestured to the screen "-first, what would you have done?" I inflamed again.

"Like, probably the same thing as those people!" He cringed back, and I noticed his tail peek out from his waistband, almost hiding from me behind Kurt's leg. I noticed my faux pas too late, as angry eyes stared at me from around the room. Feeling their gaze on me, the blood drained out of my face, and I leaned in to apologize. It was hard, and often unwanted, to remember sometimes that the demon I feared, and the lovely angel boy who I secretly hoped to be best friends with-

Were one and the same.

"Wait, Kurt, I-" I moved my hand towards his as I said this, and then my hand rested on top of his. Instead of the smooth feeling of skin on skin I had expected, I felt my hand brush something soft and deformed, and instantly recoiled with a sharp gasp, repulsed momentarily, looking into his eyes with shock. When I realized it was his fur that I could not see, I opened my mouth to apologize once more, but replacing where Kurt was a second ago was a distinctive bamf, and then a cloud of wafting purple smoke, which, too, drifted away from me as fast as it could.

**END KITTY **

Kurt watched the movie in silence from the shadows of the kitchen, clinging to the wall with ease. He watched the screen flicker with the tale of this unlucky creature, and stayed still as stone, in the hopes that all of the students and teachers would think he had simply teleported to his room. It was times like this he really missed Frau Kriemhilde at school in Winzeldorf. She was his friend; one of his only ones there. She was not like Kitty, who shied away from his very presence. She was one of his greatest childhood memories.

Kurt knew there were a fair amount of people growing up who didn`t mind his appearance. His mama, his brother Stephan, Jemaine, the circus folk. But Frau Kriemhilde was the only one who wasn`t family. She was the only one who didn`t have years to grow used to him, but simply saw him one day and accepted him for who he was. Kurt smiled at the memory, and readjusted his position on the wall, sinking into a shadow and into reminiscence.

"_Margali Szardos und Kurti Wagner. Frau Kriemhilde möchte Sie jetzt sehen." __The secretary called. Frau Kriemhilde would like to see you now. Kurti was trembling with nerves, a small quivering bundle at his mother`s side. It had been his idea to go to school; he had wanted to make more friends and there was little opportunity for him to be home schooled. The two stood up upon hearing their names, and Margali grasped Kurti`s hand through the mitten he wore, despite the warm weather, and felt his uneasiness even through the cloth. He looked up at her, through the large black hood of his coat, questioning wordlessly with his eyes and she smiled in silent answer, trying to comfort her frightened son._

"_Mitgekommen, Kurti. Seien Sie nicht erschrocken." __Come along, Kurti. Don`t be scared. In truth, Margali was terrified herself at what this new teacher would make of Kurti. He did not tend to have good experiences with new people, and Margali was already estimating how far it would be from the office to the door where they had come in. But nonetheless, she beamed at her son, hiding her discomfort, and prayed silently He smiled back at her then and clutched his rosary in his pocket for comfort as the two walked hesitantly into the little office, where the secretary closed the door behind them with a click that made Kurti jump. _

_Kurti, eight years old, still was scared of the men who had come in through his window just a few months ago. He would come crying into his mother`s bedroom some nights, due to nightmares or just recurring fear, claiming that he could feel his pitchfork scars hurt anew, that they were back to kill him. But the frequency of that seemed to go down when Margali barricaded his window with boards of wood. During the day, though, Kurti was back to normal, and normal, to Kurti, was going throughout his day, fearing strangers._

_The woman standing a few feet away from them was unthreatening, to say the least, but that did not reassure neither mother nor son. She was very thin, to the point of frailty, but carried herself with a confidence that would throw off anyone. She had auburn hair in a long, thick braid that trailed down her spine, and her decorative skirt brushed the floor as she approached to shake Margali`s hand. _

"_Hallo, mein Name ist Frau Kriemhilde."_

"_Margali Szardos." __the women shook hands pleasantly as Kurti watched, his stomach twisting into a knot. Frau Kriemhilde bent down and crouched at his level. He squeezed his mama`s hand._

"_Und das muss Kurti sein." __And this must be Kurti. She reached out her hand to shake and Kurti, recognizing the gesture, gladly took it. Frau Kriemhilde raised a thin auburn eyebrow at the unseasonably warm clothing. _

"_Hallo, Kurti._ _Warum nehmen Sie Ihre Motorhaube nicht weg." __Why don`t you take off your hood? Margali cleared her throat. _

"_Frau Kriemhilde, Kurti ist sehr ... speziell. Er sieht ziemlich verschieden von anderen Jungen aus, aber er ist __**gerade**__ ein Junge. Verstehen Sie?" __Kurti is very... special. He looks quite different form other boys, but he is __**just**__ a boy. Do you understand? Frau Kriemhilde peered into Kurti`s hood, and he flinched slightly, not welcoming her unfamiliar closeness. She saw two silhouettes of glowing golden orbs and softly gasped._

"_Seien Sie bitte nicht erschrocken, Frau." __Kurti said. Please don`t be scared. __"Ich bin nicht ein Dämon." __And ever so slowly, Kurti removed his mittens, and his coat, until he stood in all his strange glory at his mama`s feet, and his tail lashed out nervously from behind him. Frau Kriemhilde was momentarily stunned, having expected a boy with whom the fact that he was not demon was implied, but quickly regained her composure and gave both Kurti and Margali a warm smile._

"_Nein, Kurti. Ich habe Angst nicht. Sie sind nicht ein Dämon; Sie sind gerade ein Junge, und ich würde lieben, wenn Sie sich meiner Klasse anschließen würden." __I am not afraid. You are not a demon; you are just a boy and I would love it if you joined my class._

_Before Margali`s eyes, Kurti did something unexpected, even to her. He stood up tall and unafraid with a childish fanged grin quickly morphing his features, rushed forwards to Frau Kriemhilde, and wrapped his arms and tail around her waist in a tight embrace. Margali had never seen him take to another person so fast. When Frau Kriemhilde, surprised and amused at the same time, looked up at Margali, the gypsy mother was in happy tears._

"_Danke." __she said, blissful tears streaming from the corners of her smiling eyes. __"Danke so viel."_

Margali had been so happy when they had found this teacher, Kurt remembered. A teacher who didn`t see him as any more than a strange-looking boy. Frau Kriemhilde truly saw him through unbiased eyes, and Kurti knew now more than ever how truly rare that was. Smiling, he looked back at the movie screen, and decided to teleport to his room so that he would not have to see the ending.

He perched on the bed in his room, and picked up an old photo album from his childhood. In so many of the photos, he saw that he was in bandages, and, sliding his finger over the plastic sleeves, frowned.

"_You see something as freaky that, your first thought, is, like, to kill it!"_

He sighed and heard a familiar knock at the door. "Come in." he said, and the door turned, light instantly flooding the room. Instinctively, Kurt scampered deeper into the darkness, and Evan came forwards.

"Hey, Kurt. You ok, man?"

"Ja, Evan, just remembering." he gestured to the photo album. Evan slowly came closer, peering into the book.

"Whoa, dude, why are you wearing those white things in so many of your pictures?"

"Zhose are bandages." Kurt replied casually. Evan paused and swallowed.

"Oh... Well, if you're not ok; if there`s anything ever bugging you, you can... you know, talk to me." Kurt smiled and put the photo album down. He shook his head softly and turned back to Evan.

"Danke, Evan. One day, I just might." As Evan grasped the edge of the door to close it behind him, Kurt stopped him with a simple question.

"Evan? How did zhe movie end?" The blonde boy coughed and turned back.

"Corny ending. Um, his true love kissed him and reversed the thing, and he went back to human."

Kurt gave a rueful smile and mumbled something under his breath.

"What?" Evan asked.

"Nozhing, gute nacht."

"Night, Kurt." Evan closed the door behind him and Kurt stripped to his boxers, leaving the discarded clothing at his feet and quickly and climbed under the covers, falling almost instantly into a deep sleep, thinking about the happy ending for the monster in the movie.

"Mein freund, if only it vas that easy."

Downstairs, Kitty Pryde removed the DVD of the monster movie from the VDV player, and turned around to several choice students and teachers glaring at her on behalf of their furry friend. They slowly formed a type of circle around her, and she glanced around nervously.

"Like, hey guys."

"Kitty, we need to talk."


	6. Chapter 6: Sleepless Nights

**A/N: Hey everyone, my Microsoft word expired, and I had the first 2000 words of this chapter on it, so I had to retype it all on Works Word Processor and that's why it took so long. I'm back from Israel! I had tons of fun and it was great, and thanks to those people who reviewed and added me to favourites and things like that; it really made me work hard on the 14 hour plane ride =D special thanks to Fireshifter though for messaging me; that really motivated me. So, enjoy!**

**_____________________________________________________________________________________**

Evan peered at Kurt anxiously from under the thick covers of his own bed, brows furrowed bemusedly. He had chosen to go to bed while the others talked to Kitty and was now studying Kurt as he slept. Kurt usually fell asleep later than Evan, but tonight was an exception, and something about the way he slept was bothering the teen. Kurt would lie still for minutes at a time, face buried into the warm crook of the pillow, only the swelling and falling of his chest showing any signs of life, and then without warning, his tail would jerk angrily in a sharp movement, his face would screw up with a tormented expression, eyes clamping tighter together, and his entire body would tense up, forming a type of arch, to the point that Evan thought he would awaken…

and then Kurt would relax once more, continuing with this unnerving cycle. Evan, despite being his roommate, had never seen him sleep, and was unsure if this was how Kurt normally slept, or if something was terribly wrong. But then Kurt's lips began moving with speech, and his voice filled with fear, mumbling in his native German, and Evan knew he would not be falling asleep soon. So he grabbed a pad and pen, crept over next to the elf's bed, and began listening in, in the hopes that he could get some answers from his friend's tortured dreams.

"_Wie lange gehe ich jeden tag?"__ How long will I be there?_

"_Ungefähr sieben Stunden." __About seven hours. Kurti pulled the black fabric of his coat over himself tighter as he walked through the woods with his hand firmly in his mother's. He had many questions for her today, and she stoically answered each one as best as she could._

"_In welchen Rang trete ich ein?" __What grade am I going into?_

"_Das vierte." __The fourth._

"_Und Frau Kriemhilde wird mein Lehrer sein?" __And Frau Kriemhilde will be my teacher?_

"_Ja."_

"_Und ich werde Freunde dirt machen?" __And I'll make friends there? _

"_Ja, Kurti. Aber Sie werden auch lernen." __But you will also learn._

"_Und niemand wird versuchen, mich zu verletzen, weil sie denken ich bin ein Dämon?" __And no one will try to hurt me because they think I'm a demon? _

_Margali stopped at that, and pulled her son back by the hand, resting her hand on his face, a fake smile plastered on her face._

"_Nein, Liebe. Nat__ü__rlicht nicht." __Of course not. Kurti was satisfied with this answer and led his mother deeper towards the school, more childish questions on his young mind._

"_Was tue ich wenn ich ger nerv__ö__s?" __What do I do if I get nervous?_

"_Halten Sie gerade Ihren Rosenkranz und denken Sie an etwas, was Sie gl__ü__cklich macht." __Just hold on to your rosary and think of something that makes you happy. Kurti played this method over in his mind, considering it, weighing it as best as he could, before turning to his mother with wide, curious eyes._

"_Woran denken Sie, wenn Sie nerv__ö__s sind was Sie gl__ü__cklich macht?" __What do you think of when you get nervous, that makes you happy?_

_Margali turned to him with a smile. __"Ich denken an Sie." __I think of you. This relaxed Kurti and he watched his mother turn off in the direction of the woods and give a wave._

"_Es gibt Frau Kriemhilde. Gehen Sie!" __There is Frau Kriemhilde. Go! Kurti let go of his mother's hand and began running as best as he could on two legs towards the familiar figure of a woman in the distance, but firstly turned back and shouted back:_

"_Ich liebe sie, mama!" __Margali felt her heart swell in her chest._

"_Ich liebe Sie auch, Kurti, Genie__ß__en Sie Schule!" __I love you too. Enjoy school! She turned back to walk home, and the strange boy shrouded in a black coat ran towards his teacher, nervous as all boys are, on _

_the first day of school._

Evan blinked numerous times and examines the notes of what he had been able to make out from Kurt's sleep-talking. His finger glided along the page as he mouthed the words to himself. Quite ingeniously, he'd written down what he heard from Kurt's mumblings phonetically, and used his German textbook to find the proper spelling and meanings of the words he had written down. _What grade am I going into? What do I do if I get nervous? _It sounded like Kurt's dream was about his first day of school.

_Frau Kriemhilde… _Evan thought. Where had he seen that name before? Feeling a bit daring, he used his cell-phone as a crude light, bathing the room in a phosphorescent blue. He crawled over to one of Kurt's drawers, and using subtle movements that one learns when sharing a room with a boy with superhuman hearing, opened it, feeling sly. He carefully curled his fingers around the black velvet of the photo album that Kurt had been looking at earlier, and lifted the book out of it's casing.

He opened it deftly, slowly turning the crumpled pages until he found a photograph that he had only seen once before. The frayed edges and smudged inks of the photograph did not take away from it's clarity. It was a simple school photo, full of several small children sitting together, smiling at the digital eye of the camera, and Evan looked over each smiling face slowly, until his eye rested on a familiar blue one at the very bottom, sitting at the end of the little bench.

_Why at the bottom?_ Evan mused, and then slapped himself mentally. _W for Wagner, of course._

Evan looked into the eyes of the blue face, one that held a familiar easy-going grin, but seemed amazed, as if he had never seen a camera. _Which very well might have been the case. _Evan thought. He scanned the listing of the children's name beneath them. The one at the very end read KURTI WAGNER. The girl sitting next to him was smiling with her eyes too wide. He read her name: ANDREA VOGLER. On the other side of Kurt, however, was a thin woman standing up with a long braid that looked claret coloured in the artificial lighting. Evan read the label of the photograph.

**DER RANG VON FRAU HEIDI KRIEMHILDE VIER KLASSE 2001**

Reaching for the thick binding of his textbook, Evan deciphered the inscription. Mrs. Heidi Kriemhilde's fourth grade class 2000. _Kurt had been… eight in this picture. _Evan placed the album back into the drawer when he heard Kurt stir. Freezing, he slowly turned around, as slowly as he could, thinking Kurt had awoken and seen his invasion of his photographs. But what was there was not the accusing glare of Kurt Wagner, but rather Kurt squeezing his tail under the covers with one hand, as if nervously. Curious, Evan glanced at the display and heard Kurt start speaking once more.

"_Ach, Kurti. Dort sind Sie. Folgen Sie jetzt." __There you are, Follow me now. He smiled in excitement for what he imagined school would be like._

"_Jawohl, Frau Kriemhilde." __Kurti followed her rather quickly, and noticed the other children getting closer, just a little closer than Kurti was comfortable with. One boy in particular, a taller one with hair so pale it was almost white and black eyes that contrasted came very close, and Kurti grew apprehensive. Like his mama had told hi, he wrapped his small mitten-covered hand around the rosary in his pocket and thought of the birthday party he would have in a few months with Stephan and Jimaine. Balloons, games, and cake…_

"_Hallo. Mein Name ist Nickolaus Gottschalk. Was ist Ihr Name?"_

"_Um… Kurti. Kurti Wagner." __The boy, nickolaus proffered his hand to shake and Kurti placed his own clothed one into the boy's and did just that, feeling very much grown up._

"_Warum sind Sie nicht wegnehmend diesen Mantel?" __Nickolaus asked. Why are you not taking off your coat__? "Du m__ü__ssen sehr hei__ß__ sein." __You must be very hot. Kurti looked down, away from the boy and clutched the rosary tighter._

"_Ich sehe verschieden… nicht wie normale Jungen aus." __I look different… not like normal boys. There was a distinct awkward pause as Nickolaus attempted to subtly peek under the black hood._

"_Es wird mich nicht bel__ä__stigen. Du scheinen nett." __it will not bother me, said Nickolaus. You seem nice. At this unbiased judgement of him, Lurti felt hope that Nickolaus might actually not care._

"_Versprechen Sie, dass Sie Angst nicht haben werden? Einige Menschen denken, dass ich ein D__ä__mon bin." __Do you promise you will not be afraid? Some people think that I am a demon. This made Nickolaus flash Kurti an innocent smile._

"_**Ich**__ nicht denke das du sind ein D__ä__mon. Und ich denke D__ä__monen Schw__ä__nze haben." __**I**__ do not think that you are a demon. And I think that demons have tails. Kurti flashed bright yellow light at Nickolaus._

"_Ich habe ein Schw__ä__nz." __I have a tail, Kurti said, so that Nickolaus could barely hear, but at this, the boy only came closer and his eyes flashed with interest._

"_Es ist noch egal. Wenn Sie muich Sie sehen lassen, erz__ä__hle ich Ihnen ein Geheimnis __ü__ber mich selbst. Was denken Sie?" __It still makes no difference. If you let me see you, I'll tell you a secret about myself. What do you think? Kurti, slightly irritated by the boy's persistence, weighed this option and then grabbed Nickolaus' hand, dragging him to the back of the line of children eagerly so that no one would see. Kurti looked around anxiously, and slowly, never taking his eyes off of Nickolaus' expression, peeled off a mitten._

"…_Du haben pelz?" __You have fur?_

"_Ja." __Then, steeling himself, Kurti grasped the edges of his hood , and gingerly pushed them back, letting the black fabric swathe across his shoulders. Nickolaus gasped a little in surprise, and then smiled. Sheepishly, Kurti smiled back, fangs exposed. When he noticed another girl from a class line staring, he quickly pulled the hood and mitten pack on, and slouched his shoulders a little. Nickolaus walked next to him in silent deliberation for a while, and then proclaimed:_

"_Ich denke dass Die k__ü__hl aussehen." __I think you look cool. Kurti grinned and blushed a little at praise and then stared up at Nickolaus, his first friend outside of home, He looked back into Kurti's unfamiliar glowing eyes, and then asked a question only a child would ask in this situation._

"_Kan ich Ihren Schwanz sehen?" __Can I see your tail? Kurti shook his head. _

"_Sp__ä__ter. Ein Geheimnis, bitte." __Later. A secret, please. Nickolaus thought for a too-long time, and then leaned in overdramatically at the impatient boy and whispered._

"_Hier ist es… Ich trage verschiende farbige Socken." __Here it is… he looked around intensely before saying the only secret that came to his mind. I wear different coloured socks, And this made both of the boys burst into laughter until they were ushered into the classroom, the first one he had ever been in, and Kurti didn't think twice about what he was doing when he uncharacteristically followed the examples of all the other children there and placed his coat on the rack._

Evan wrote as fast as he could, pen nearly tearing the paper, ink smudging, and could not see anything out of the ordinary so far about the dream. Except for Kurt telling someone that he possessed a tail, but that did not seem so out of the ordinary for someone who, in fact, _did_ possess a tail. Perhaps this was how the elf always moved in his sleep; he did have some strange physiological habits. But it still didn't seem right. Evan hesitantly readied to put his work away when Kurt arched his tail more violently that he had been doing the whole night, and his tail began to quiver, even in sleep. _What the hell, fuzzy? What's going on in that head of yours?_

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Downstairs, Kitty Pryde slowly rose from her position on the ground, joints cracking, and backed away slightly from the air of the three students and three teachers who glared at her with two separate telepathic conversations darting between them all.

"Ok…" she said, needing to break the silence that only she was aware of. "What do we, like, need to talk about?" Rogue opened her mouth to say something, and Kitty flinched back, knowing by the venom in her eyes that it would not be something very nice to hear, but then she closed it again, nostrils flared and took a deep breath. Jean decided to be the one to answer.

"About the way you've been treating Kurt." She looked down and decided to try one last time to avoid any conflict.

"How… have I been treating Kurt?"

"Bitchily." Kitty's head snapped up at that and saw that the other five people in the room had on essentially the same shocked expression as her. The professor cleared his throat and calmly declared:

"You three, please leave. We'd like to talk to Kitty alone." The students turned towards the professor's authoritative voice and gave slow nods before sending one last glare in Kitty's general direction and heading upstairs. When the sound of three doors closing shut ricocheted against the walls, Kitty looked to the professor sheepishly, ready for a prompt talking-to.

"Sit down, Kitty." he said and she took a seat on one of the couches, three teachers turned towards her.

"Jean is right, we do need to talk about the way you've been treating Kurt." She was tempted to ask once again how she had been treating Kurt, but from the expressions of the two teachers behind him, feared eliciting much the same response. So she said nothing and fiddled with the hem of her shirt.

"Why exactly are you so…" the professor thought for the right word to say and heard several suggestion in his mind from Logan and Ororo that he promptly ignored. "withdrawn from Kurt when he's not wearing his image inducer?"

She licked her lips.

"I don't know, professor. I guess he just… scares me." Logan decided to intervene.

"Do you think he's gonna hurt ya?"

She paused. "No…"

"Has he ever said anythin' bad to ya?"

"…no…"

"Has he ever done anythin' bad to _anyone_?"

She looked down. "…no…"

"Then what have ya got to be scared of?"

She bit her lip and looked up at him through her lashes, slowly shrugging her shoulders up to her ears. Her lips parted slowly, ready to answer, but she considered her words for a length of time before actually speaking them.

"I'm not sure. I like him; I like to talk to him… but when he isn't, like… wearing that watch and I can see… yeah… he just looks so… I guess unnatural. _Unholy,_ kind of."

"You know, he's actually very religious."

"I know, he wears that, like, cross, but it doesn't really help. And that… um… _tail_ is just **creepy**." Her face twisted into a mask of repulsion, and this unnerved the others.

"But you like him, yes? As a person?" Ororo asked, leaning forwards, trying to salvage the conversation somehow, to end on a good note, secretly hoping Kurt was not listening in.

"Yeah, actually, I do. But when he's like… not wearing that thing, it's really hard to like him. I can't explain it, but he just scares me. I keep thinking he's going to stop being, like, what he's like now and start being…"

"Demonic?"

She looked down again, shameful and nodded, gulping.

"Well, this needs to stop." Ororo said grimly. "Before this really starts affecting Kurt."

_____________________________________________________________________________________

"_FRAU KRIEMHILDE, WAS IST DAS?" _

"_Machen Sie es aus!" __Make it leave!_

"_Es ist der Teufel!" __It's the devil!_

"_Nein, der Teufel ist rot. Dass ist gerade ein Ungeheuer!__" __The devil is red, that is just a monster!_

"_Ein D__ä__mon!"_

_Kurti fumbled to retrieve the coat that had fallen on the floor, usually skilful fingers clumsy and useless with dread. He opened his mouth to explain to the large crown of panicked children, but all that came out from his opened mouth was a feeble squeak, lost in the haze of chaos as tears welled up in his eyes._

"_Sehen Sie, dass?Er hatten Giftz__ä__hnen!" __Did you see that? He had fangs!_

"_Sie hatten Blut?" __Did they have blood?_

"_Ew… ein Schw__ä__nz…" __Ew… a tail…_

"_Ich denke, Sie hatten Blut!" __I think they had blood!_

_One child wailed: __"Ich m__ö__chte nicht, dass er mein Blut zu trinken!" __I don't want him to drink my blood!_

_Then someone, in abject terror and I instinctual reflex, grabbed a heavy metal stool, and with surprising speed and strength, hurled it at the frozen boy._

Evan jumped as he saw Kurt spasm violently, pushing himself deep into the bed, tail lashing like a fleeing snake, and watched a tear leak from his eyes.

"_Nein, bitte auf__ö__ren!" __Please stop! Little Kurti shouted, having finally found his voice in the centre of a vicious ring of children, the darkness of the sack returning to him in a flurry, He clamped his eyes shut and wrapped his arms around himself, the glass wounds on his back stinging with renewed pain at every blow, and Kurti, fearing death once more, began to wail and scream._

"Nein… Ich bin nicht…. ein Dämon… bitte…" Evan leaned in to listen to the pleading sleepy mumbling, and silently began to panic as the elf twitched in what seemed to be a cringe in his slumber, with tears still falling now alarmingly fast.

"Bitte… nein…"

"_BITTE!" __Kurti screamed and looked at the children, a mass of moving limbs and clenched fists, Few actually were part of the attack, but many simply watched and did nothing, sneering or simply looking confused. He needed the circle to open, needed air, needed more light, and withdrew into himself, trying to squeeze himself into the smallest ball he could. _

"_Was tust du?" __What are you doing, shouted someone. Nickolaus. He tried to pry one of the boys away, and was pulled into a confrontation. Kurti, delirious with shock and in pain, took it upon himself to glance down at the boy's feet through his tears. One sock was purple while the other was a vibrant green. He hadn't been lying. And then a hard blow to the eye brought Kurti out of his thoughts._

The elf now stopped speaking, his pillow and face nearly soaked, and let out a tinny, continuous squeak that Evan leaned in to hear it. The boy paled, as he listened to what he knew, in real life, would be a scream.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

"How can I make it better, though?" Kitty asked. "I still almost scream every time I, like, see him." _Or touch him._ she thought.

"Kitty, he's just a mutant, like you."

"I know." she said. _But he doesn't __**look**__ like me. _Ororo pinched the bridge of her nose.

"Well, it's clearly hurting him. You just need to… get used to him."

"And how would I do that?"

"Maybe spend some time with him; see him without the inducer." Kitty weighed her options.

"Come on, Kitty, who knows how much he's hurt by it?"

_____________________________________________________________________________________

The screaming. Evan needed to stop the dream-screaming. It was quiet, but in short wails now, and tears continued to fall, not dying out. Kurt spasmed and cringed, clearly in pain. Evan leafed through the textbook, his hand unable to turn the pages properly with panis.

"Come on, come on, it's gotta be in here…" He found the page then and awkwardly tried to pronounce the words. He came up to Kurt's bed and hesitantly pressed the boy's head to his chest and wrapped his arms around him.

_The crowd was pushed away then, leaving Kurti to cry on the floor, bruises forming black beneath the fur, his eye swelling, and Frau Kriemhilde came towards him, wrapping her arms around him. _

"_Du sind in ordnung. Alles ist in ordnung." __she said, It's ok. Everything's ok. Kurti felt himself getting swayed and the tears started to recede._

"Du sind in ordnung. Alles ist in ordnung." Evan kept repeating until the tears stopped, and then he kept him there some more, waiting for the spasming to stop as well, for his brow to smooth. Awkwardly, he kept swaying, deeply worried about what was there, plaguing the mind of his friend.

_Margali was called to come to the school, and she was there within the hour, rushing through the narrow halls to Frau Kriemhilde's office, where Kurti sat with the teacher, in the trench coat once again, his arms wrapped around his clothed knees._

_She pulled his hood down, and saw the slit of a glowing eye that was obscured by swollen bruising and gasped._

"_Kurti, Du sind in ordnung? Was ist passiert?" __Are you OK? What happened?_

____________________________________________________________________________________

"All right," Kitty said, looking earnestly into the faces of the three teachers. "I'll, like, find some way to spend time with him."

"Good, Kitty, maybe you can ask other people to come as well, so neither of you feels…" Ororo exchanged glances with Logan. "…uncomfortable."

"Yeah, ok, I'll ask him and some people to have a picnic or something tomorrow." she said half-heartedly, trying to feign enthusiasm for her spectators.

"Great. You may go to bed now, Kitty." Smiling, she made her way up the stairs until she could be seen no more, and then she sighed to herself, and fell asleep instantly, plans stewing on her mind interrupted by sleep.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

_Kurti looked his mother sadly in the eyes, and answered quietly. __"Du gelog."_

"Du gelog." Kurt said, and then his brow smoothed, and he went limp in the normality of sleep. Evan laid him down, and placed all of his tools away, climbing under his own covers.

_You lied._

Then the boy closed his eyes and thought the two words over, not really sleeping at all.


	7. Chapter 7: You're finally welcome

**A/N: Special thanks to Caprichoso and especially amateur german-critic; I took your advice and fixed the things you gave me in the first chapter. Huge thanks to everyone else: thanks for reviewing and faving and alerting and all that stuff =) Anyways, I FINALLY got Microsoft office again thanks to my awesome brother! 3. So now I can actually write this stuff easier! But right now, I apologize in advance for this terrible, terrible chapter. I personally hate how it turned out but I kinda needed it =P Also, if anyone is a beta that helps with german, please contact me as soon as possible, because I need help! And, I could help back… although the only language I speak is Russian… but if you're writing something for, say, Colossus, we could maybe work something out =) **

**Disclaimer: I own none of the X-men.**

When Kurt woke up, sighing loudly from the exhausting and draining after-effects of yet another nightmare, which he could not remember fully, he was a little perturbed to see Evan's wide brown eyes staring at him from where he lay on his bed. Kurt blinked and rubbed sleep from his eyes, and when he opened them again, the boy was still staring.

"Was?" Kurt asked, a little irritated and tired.

"Nothing…" "sleep well?"

"Ja, fine." Kurt lied. "Vhy?"

"No reason." Evan said, still staring at him. Feeling a bit uncomfortable, Kurt decided to break the silence.

"Um… how about you?"

"Great."

Kurt looked around, trying to avoid his gaze.

"…Okay… I'm going to go take a shower." He grabbed his silver brushes and went into the bathroom, bemused about the strange way his roommate was acting. When he was showered, brushed down and dry, feeling a tiny bit better already, Kurt came out of the bathroom to see that Evan was gone.

_Hmm. Did I take so long zat he vent to anozher bathroom?_ he thought, a little self-consciously. He walked over to his closet and dressed quickly, and then immediately strapped his watch on tightly to his wrist, clicked the button and teleported downstairs to emerge in smoke looking human in a startlingly empty kitchen, with only the teachers and Kitty sitting around the table, munching on breakfast.

"Vhere is everyone?" he asked, feeling like the room was too empty, missing the others' presence.

"I am not sure. Bobby was here already, and Jean's alarm has not gone off, so I think that she is still sleeping." Ororo answered, recalling the lack of the irritatingly continuous piercing that usually would be the sound of Jean awakening. "I really do not know where the others are; they haven't come down yet."

"Hmm… strange." He pointedly ignored Kitty as she glanced over at him with contemplative cobalt eyes, and he opened the fridge to pull out a carton of milk, which he poured into a bowl he grasped with his other hand. Then, with the long tail he had not yet tucked into his pant leg, he poured in a few scoops of cereal, and then closed the door with his foot and began to eat, still standing, almost no one paying any mind to the fact that he had just used four limbs to eat a bowl of cereal. He looked out to the school from the window of the kitchen, milk dribbling down his chin, and felt an uneasiness at the bad dream he'd partly forgotten.

He remembered the important aspects of the memory, sure; the heavy, painful blows and the circle of bloodthirsty children; he remembered Nickolaus and Frau Kriemhilde. He even remembered his mama picking him up from school afterwards, and the conversation they had in the woods on the way back. But it bothered him that he could not remember any of the children's faces clearly or exactly what they shouted at him. He had an idea of the content, of course, and remembered a few phrases that belonged explicitly to that day, but a thousand similar memories had, over time, merged all the people and all the insult-laden jeering into one grotesque monster in his mind.

When the bowl of cereal was done, he washed it thoroughly and turned back to find Kitty looking at him intensely, looking through him, into his eyes. Groggy and still exasperated from having to relive another awful memory, he briefly considered turning off his image inducer and jumping out at her, snarling just so that she would leave; would stop staring at him, but the thought passed quickly and instead, he perched on the chair and on a second thought, slowly shifted to sit on it instead, tail waving out of the hole in the back. Her eyes followed his every movement, and she munched on a piece of toast, looking very much robotic.

The two sat like that for a while, simply staring at each other, until Kurt got annoyed.

"Yes?" he asked, imploring. Kitty coughed and her face tinted pink when she realized she'd been staring all this time.

"Um, Kurt… do you want to, like, go with me and, um, some of the other people to a picnic today? Or maybe tomorrow?" He raised his brows, surprised. This was not what he had expected to hear. Suddenly smiling half-heartedly, he reached forwards and grabbed two slices of toast, which he proceeded to coat with peanut butter.

"Sure. I can ask Evan and Scott. You ask some girls?" She curved her lips up in an easy smile.

"Yeah, great." A comfortable silence passed as Kurt gobbled down his food and started to think that perhaps this wouldn't be such a bad day after all.

"What do ya mean sleep-talking?" Rogue asked, standing with a confused Scott as Evan proceeded to tell to them the events of the previous night.

"I mean **talking**_._ In German, though. I caught some of what he said."

"What did he say?" asked Scott seriously.

"Just a bunch of things like… 'How long will I be there', 'What do I do if I get nervous', 'Will Frau Kriemhilde be my teacher'… sounded like his first day of school."

"Okay, so he sleep-talks. It's not that big a deal. Ah know tons of people who sleep talk." Evan slid his hand down his face and looked around to ensure no one else was listening.

"After a while, he started… screaming."

"Screaming?"

"And _crying._ Real crying; the pillow was soaked, and he was shaking, it was terrible. I don't think he even

knows he did it last night."

"I didn't hear any screaming or crying."

"It was really quiet, I barely heard it myself."

"What coulda happened on his first day of school ta make him scream and crah like that?"

Evan grimaced a little in memory.

"I don't know, but he was tensing up a lot and moving around, kind of in these arches, and then he'd curl up into a ball. I think he was in pain. He was screaming stuff-" Evan whipped his head around once more, just to be safe. "really generic nightmare stuff like no, and stop. It really freaked me out. He screamed: I am not a something; I didn't catch what, and then right before he calmed down, he said: 'you lied.' What could _that _mean?"

"Maybe just a random nightmare?" Scott suggested. Evan shook his head.

"Maybe, but… I don't know, it was pretty bad."

"Hmm… Should we ask him about it?"

"No, I already made it seem like I didn't know. And he doesn't want to tell me about it. Or he just doesn't remember the nightmare; but I don't think that's it."

"All right, but we should make sure he's ok. Let's go, he's probably waitin' for us in the kitchen." The three youths made their way towards the aforementioned kitchen, where, as predicted, Kurt was sitting on a chair, eating peanut buttered toast.

"Gut morning." he said, lacking some of his usual enthusiasm, clearly tired from the awkward German-English slur.

"Good morning, Kurt." Scott said cautiously, making his way to the pantry.

"Morning, sugah." Rogue put in, grabbing some of the cereal that Kurt had eaten earlier. "Ya sleep well?"

"Ja, fine." he lied again and then once again said the only thing that could be said in reply to such an impromptu question. "And you?"

"Yeah, very well."

"Good."

…

It was then that he noticed her staring at him as she ate her cereal, much like Evan had been. And then Scott joined her with a glass of juice in one hand and a grilled cheese sandwich in his other, also seeming to look in his direction behind the glasses. Why was everyone staring at him today? Kurt had to wonder and then, irritated, broke the silence again, far more times than anyone should have to in the early morning after a nightmare.

"_Yes_…?" he prompted, and Scott immediately looked down.

"Nothin'." Rogue answered and continued to stare, subtler this time, as she methodically shovelled spoonful after spoonful of cereal into her mouth, leaving Kurt to wonder if perhaps he was still asleep, and everyone was part of some kind of dream.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Kurt was bored. Class was a droning series of noises again, and he wasn't the least bit interested in listening to them. The picnic had been scheduled for tomorrow, since many had plans for today, so it would be on the day before the day before his birthday, which was fine with him. But now he sat uncomfortably on the stiff metal chairs of his English class, and stared at a blank piece of paper, twirling a pencil awkwardly in his hand. He didn't have the attention span right now to write, but it irritated him inexplicably that when he would stare at the clock, then at the blackboard, then dart his gaze all around the perimeter of the room, and then when his eyes finally returned to his paper, it would be, once again… blank.

To add to his morning irritants, when the teacher came around to frown at his continuously blank page, he was forced to carefully readjust the way he held the pencil, making sure not to keep his two fingers too far apart. In Kurt's mind, there were a few things that could happen from the teacher noticing the strange way his three fingers held the pencil, and neither of them were something Kurt felt a terrible desire to deal with. His tail was jerking away from the chair in protest yet again, but he willed it back to it's uncomfortable position, resisting the urge to hit it, instead pinching the bridge of his nose in exasperation. _Sometimes, I really wish I could perch on this chair comfortably in class. But that would look really sttrange… Is there an image-inducer for chairs…?_ he wondered, thoughts going astray again, and then he sorted out his mind to focus on the task at hand and, looked at the paper and slammed his head on the table.

Blank.

On top of that, the fur on his hands had, from a month's neglect, gotten a bit too long and shaggy, which enlarged his already generously-proportioned fingers, making it further difficult to hold a writing implement, especially in a way that appeared human. Already too many mutant problems this morning, and then a small, yet persistently annoying non-mutant problem to go with that. The non-mutant problem, was his English essay. Kurt had been assigned by his teacher to write 1-3 pages about a childhood conflict, and write a lesson he had learned from it. In one class. He saw most people scribbling away at their papers, writing about losing a spelling bee or learning that actions speak louder than words, or that the best way to deal with a problem is to hit it as hard as they can, amongst other generic things and Kurt frowned at the idea that he had no childhood conflicts suitable for the naïve atmosphere of an English class. He thought of how interesting it would be to write, say, about his ninth birthday and leave his English teacher thoroughly confused and disturbed. _The only lesson that I learned in that 'conflict',_ Kurt thought bitterly, _was that apparently all men take a knife with them to an ice cream shop._

He remembered one conflict that was relatively mild and childish, but still would not make sense to anyone who did not know him as himself. Using artistic license, and several plagiarisms from television amongst other things, Kurt edited the story into something normal in his head, all the while trying not to think about the piercing gazes of Evan, Rogue, and Scott this morning, and began to write, sighing heavily as he once again willed his most irritating appendage back to where it belonged, adjusted his fingers when the teacher came around, and then of course, inevitably returned to the dark thoughts of his nightmare, the nagging feeling of the stares, and then exasperatingly slammed his head once more onto his incessantly blank page.

Unbeknownst to Kurt, he was still being watched. For a different reason than that of her friends, Kitty Pryde's eyes were on the boy, watching curiously as he seemed to be staring nowhere, occasionally pressing his head down, and now writing slowly, his face growing more and more irritated as he shifted his leg around. He was not usually this snippy-looking, and she could tell that he was uncharacteristically frustrated by the way his lips pursed in and his eyebrows creased together. She had never noticed it before, but his holographic hair and brows were a dark blue, much like his fur. Kitty wondered, while listlessly drawing shapes and spirals on her own empty page, what else Kurt and the demon had in common, in terms of appearance.

She scanned over his hair. Same hairstyle. Definitely the same height and lean, fit, build. She had known that already. It was easier to see on the hologram, but he looked quite strong for his age and height, and she quirked an eyebrow, a part of her female mind now comparing him to the rest of the boys she knew. Kitty's eyes then went on to his face. His face and eyes were definitely the same shape as when he was in his natural state. The colour was just different. And there were pupils… and irises… and neither of them glowed. She went down to his nose. She had to really think hard about what he looked like in his natural state to make a comparison, but from what she remembered, the nose and cheekbones were positioned in the same place. And upon further inspection, so was the mouth.

Kitty blinked, realizing that the hologram actually did not alter him all that much. Her silent inventory revealed, a bit startlingly, that all the hologram did for Kurt was take away his fur and change his colouring. Then she saw his hand move on his lap and added the illusion of five fingers to her secret list. Also, the feet. She had to wonder, was he not wearing shoes under the hologram? If so, what would happen if someone accidentally stepped on the holographic heel? Would their foot phase through? Probably, if it was holographic. And how did it make his spine straighter? Did he straighten himself for school? Her mind filled with many questions at the complex workings of the illusion itself, and before she knew it, there were ten minutes left and her page was a beautifully useless array of intricate spirals and loops. She quickly scribbled down a conflict she made up, based loosely on something that she had seen on television (something everyone claimed to do), and then stood up sharply at the ring of the bell.

She went over to him shyly, steadily staying behind him, adding the removal of the points of his ears to her list as she did so. She recalled Wolverine calling him 'elf' at some point, and grinned at how fitting the silly nickname actually was. Not like hers. Kätzchen? What did that mean? She had never bothered to ask. After a while, when Kitty was fairly sure that Kurt couldn't have not heard her, she decided to be the one to break the silence between the two, finding him in the horde of students.

"Hey." she said, sneaking up on him as best as she could. He did not feign surprise, but merely gave a slight, still tired smile in her direction.

"Hallo."

"What did you, like, write about?" she asked, honestly curious after the strenuous display of thought she had seen earlier.

"I mostly changed somezhing zhat happened to me vhen I was eight. About zhe tooth fairy." as an afterthought, he added: "mixed with a lot ov copyright infringing." She giggled.

"Yeah, I just told about how I-" she paused. "Did you say eight?" Kurt looked over at her.

"Ja… vhy?"

"Nothing… it's just…" she let herself trail off.

"Just vhat?" he pressed.

"Well… eight is a little late to be believing in the tooth fairy, don't you think?"

"…Everyone I know stopped at around nine or ten." There was a distinct pause as Kitty took in this new information. "Vhen did _you_ stop believing in zhe tooth fairy?"

"Around six. Seven, maybe."

"SIX??" he exclaimed, clearly shocked, eyes widening and the glow from them becoming apparent on her face. She had to squint a little due to the brightness he shone directly into her eyes, and smirked bemusedly at his aghast face.

"Yeah, what's wrong with six?"

"Who told you zhat she vas not real?"

"I don't know… my parents?"

"Mein gott, your childhood vas stolen from you." he said bluntly, and Kitty let out a shocked laugh.

"My childhood was _not_ stolen from me!" she said, the harsh laughter in her voice.

"Ja, it vas! Vhat six year old goes around not believing in zhe tooth fairy?"

"I still had Santa Claus for another, like, three years." she said, defending herself.

"THREE YEARS?" She had to laugh again at his utterly horrified expression.

"Well, yeah, when did you stop believing in Santa Claus?" He looked over at her, radiating light from his eyes, a mischievous smile playing on the corners of his mouth.

"Who said I don't still?" She laughed again, heartily, and he watched her with a grin. _Fangs,_ she thought, frowning a little. _It hides the fangs._

As they walked towards the grounds of the mansion, still chatting idly about childhood beliefs and retained habits, Kitty thought that seeing him in his natural demon form would not be so difficult this time. Mentally, she began to steel herself for the removal of his hologram, convincing herself that she needed to simply get over it. Wolverine was right, she wasn't afraid that he would hurt her, and if that wasn't the case, why was she acting so terribly to him? She recalled what Storm had said to her that night: _"__Come on, Kitty, who knows how much he__'__s hurt by it?__" _She looked over to his lively chatter, to the glow from his eyes, and thought to herself that he couldn't possibly be _too_ affected.

The two walked over to the institution, where they had a scheduled training session. Changing into her uniform, she slid the lycra over herself and spoke to herself motivationally in her mind. _I can do this, I know I can. It can't be that bad; it __**won't**__ be that bad. Just because this is my first full group training session… No, when I look at him, it'll be fine, how bad could it be? What am I so afraid of anyways? I have to just get over it and everyone's lives will be easier. _

Kurt, on the other hand, was perched on a bench in the changing room already in uniform, stretching out the stiff muscles of his tail. All the other boys were talking amongst themselves, and though Kurt fully heard the conversation, he felt no desire to jump in, content with being alone with his thoughts as the sinewy limb coiled and uncoiled behind him. He was looking forwards more and more to his seventeenth birthday, and found it hard to concentrate on anything but that. The usual excitement he had retained since childhood was starting to build in his stomach. He would call home on his birthday to his mother and brother and friends, and he'd get a colossal amount of cards that people always mailed early so that they would arrive on the actual day. He'd catch up with everyone and tell them about how it's been spending his first ever birthday in America. (He had visited the past few)Maybe he would talk to Margali about the nightmares…

"Kurt! Let's go!"

Kurt snapped his head up to see Scott standing at the door of the locker room impatiently, and leaped down from the bench he sat on. He walked over and passed through the door, seeing all the girls prepared for an exercise, including one girl that he had not as of yet trained with before. Kurt crossed the room, to meet his teacher, suddenly very awake.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

"Okay," said Storm, gathering them all to the wall of the room, so that they were all pressed against it. "this is very standard; mainly a teamwork exercise. The point of this is to press the button on the other side. Each person must press it once, and then they can leave. But the safety of other team members must be put before reaching the button yourself." she gestured to the other side of the room, where there was a tiny green button protruding from the wall, so high up that it was nearly touching the ceiling. "There _will_ be powers allowed. There will also be a series of drones that will try to stop you, as you should all be accustomed to." she joked. The students smiled knowingly and held their breath, waiting for the catch. Storm opened her mouth and looked upwards, watching as a series of metal rungs came out from the ceiling and walls.

"In a moment, the floor will be replaced with a pool of red paint. You are not to fall in the red paint, or you are 'dead' and will have to re-do the exercise alone later. You have five seconds before the drones come alive and the floor disappears. Four."

Everyone quickly climbed onto a rung, holding onto it rather uncomfortably, and, as promised, the floors began to part, revealing a large pool of red paint.

"Vhere did zhey get zhis ridiculous amount of red paint?" Kurt asked Evan, as they both held onto the rungs on the wall. "And vhy?"

"I have no idea." Evan said. "Maybe they were going to paint the whole mansion red at some point." Kurt grinned, ready for a quip to return to Evan, but out of the corner of his eye, saw a drone flying over towards them, and disappearing with his friend in his grip, told himself that the exercise had begun.

The two reappeared on the ceiling, and Kurt helped Evan get a grip on the rungs. When the boy claimed he would be able to handle himself from the ceiling, and impaled the very drone that had attacked him, Kurt grabbed the rungs easily with his dexterous hands, and casually swung himself from them towards another team-mate that needed help, flipping from holding them with his hands to his feet. Memories of the circus instantly came back to him, and his routine, still implanted in his mind after three years, was tempting him. Later, he would sneak back in here and set up a copy of his trapeze. Later, for now, Scott needed help. Leaping from rung to rung and slamming a few drones into the ceiling as he did so, he watched as Scott held on awkwardly to one rung with both hands, battling a strange looking robot with his feet rather unsuccessfully.

It hooked one of it's pincers around Scott's leg and now was pulling him down, his hands slipping on the rungs. Kurt swung over to Scott, flipping over to hold the rungs with his feet, then he grabbed the robot, and arched himself to face Scott, who blasted it into pieces.

"Thanks."

"Bitte schoen." And then he swung away again.

Storm watched how easy the exercise seemed to be for him, and curiously decided to change a few settings, interested to see what would happen.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Kitty's eyes were wide as she watched Kurt handle the rungs with inhuman grace. He bent this way and that, soft bones and spine complying to his commands, and teleported a drone inches above the pool of paint, before teleporting up again to watch it fall. He waited a few minutes before having to teleport again, but the way he manipulated the terrain was an impressive thing to watch. There was still an underlying uneasiness at his form, though she tried to pretend it was just holo-Kurt wearing a costume. The fear was less prominent, even she had to admit, after she'd thought analyzed herself, but she still watched him with a kind of distant awe as four drones all set their sights on him.

He grinned over at the control room, and then watched as they came from all directions, ready to attack him with spinning blades. He adjusted himself so that his tail wrapped tightly around one of the rungs, and then let his body relax, four limbs ready to battle. He caught the first drone with his left arm, holding it at a safe distance so that he would not be cut. Then he caught one with his other arm, and Kitty was tempted to call out when two launched from behind him. But he caught those just as easily with his toes and held them all far from each other. Then, with a wink to the control room, he strained all of his limbs closer together, so that the robots nicked at his ankles and wrists, and then teleported close to the button, watching with bright eyes and an impish smile as they cut each other to pieces.

Kitty was so transfixed on watching Kurt that she had not noticed, in her climb upwards, that she had been targeted as well, and before she knew it, she felt a pain in her hands, slipped, and then let out a scream as she fell towards a pool of red paint that was beginning to look startlingly like blood. Kurt, a few feet away from the offending green button, saw her fall and all she heard was BAMF. For the briefest moment, Kurt wondered if this was a trap and Kitty was going to attack him as soon as he caught her, but hee quickly pushed that thought aside and teleported. Kitty felt something wrap around her as she fell, and then she felt a pull on all sides before the pressure on her was released, and she wanted to vomit. She looked up, and still jumped a little when she saw Kurt staring back down at her. _He's just Kurt with fur, just Kurt with fur, just Kurt with fur… and fangs._ she looked back up at him and tried to push back her uneasiness.

"Thanks, Kurt." she said, clearing her throat and subconsciously moving a little further from him. She flashed him an almost-genuine smile, but he did not say anything back, rather nodded in acknowledgement and threw the drone to the other side of the room, before teleporting to the button, and pressing it triumphantly. Eventually, everyone had maneuvered their way to the button, and Kurt was already in his shower in his room. While in there, he had a thought. _Am I supposed to bring food to this picnic? Hmm… I'll have to do that tonight. And am I supposed to come in my inducer?_

By the time he got out, Evan was waiting outside of the washroom, tapping his foot. Guiltily, Kurt shrugged his shoulders and the other boy passed him with a sigh, smiling all the while.

"Evan?" Kurt asked when he was already inside the bathroom.

"Yeah?"

"Are you coming to zhe picnic?"

"Yeah, I think so. Sounds cool."

"Do you think I'm supposed to vear my inducer?"

"What? No! It's just going to be us."

"And Kitty."

"…Yeah, and Kitty. You shouldn't though."

"I guess you're right. It's just…" Kurt was debating on whether to tell Evan, his best friend, about his fears and possibly nightmares, and was about to before he lost the nerve he was sure he would lose in the next minute.

"Kurt, let's talk when I come out of the shower, 'kay?" Kurt smiled. Evan had made his decision for him.

"Ja, ok." And then he dressed, turned his watch on, and teleported to the roof, perched amongst the gargoyles,

thinking that whatever he was made of, it was a lot weaker than stone.

Kitty was walking and reading at the same time along the sidewalk close to the institute. Despite having been told by

her parents that that was not the brightest idea, she decided to revel in the fact that she lived without them now, and

so was walking with her nose in a book. A car steadily turned the corner to pass that street, something that rarely

happened, but Kitty was too engrossed to pay it any mind. The car went to a stop a few meters in front of her, and

Kitty kept walking. She turned the page, and faltered in her step just a little as she got close to the car. There was a

sound, and Kitty looked up for a little while. And that was enough.

From his perch on the roof, Kurt saw a car coming alarmingly close to Kitty, who appeared to be reading and

walking at the same time. That car was parked, but still on, he noticed. And he could just barely make out who was

inside. Someone… light blue? Mystique? Sure his eyes were playing tricks on him, Kurt was more than a little

shocked when blue arms along with several others reached out and began to pull Kitty in. Kitty readied herself to

scream, but found that one of the arms covered her mouth. Somehow, she forgot that she could phase out of their

grip and so settled for panicking and trying to fight as she was pulled in.

BAMF

Smoke seeped in through the window as there was someone outside of the car. He snuck a peek inside, gold eyes

meeting Kitty's terrified blue ones, and then the car started moving, and she made a muffled noise of protest. _Why is _

_she not phasing??_He thought, and then teleported to the inside of the car. The smoke filled the enclosed space, and

Kurt pulled the arms off of her while they were too busy shielding their mouths and noses, and opened the latch,

pushing them both out, and rolling in the ground with her still in his arms. She felt strange fuzziness against her bare

skin, but it was warm and safe. Kitty leaned in to the fuzziness as she rolled on the ground, still in shock from the

quick, frightening flash of events. Then there was more fuzziness wrapped around her calves, and the rolling

stopped. Kurt looked at her from the ground, surprised that she did not seem to mind the feeling of the fur or the tail

that he unwound from around her feet. Instead, her shocked face went from an O to a genuinely thankful smile.

"Thanks, Kurt." She said again, and this time he grinned back.

"You're velcome."


	8. Chapter 8: A little too late

**A/N: Thanks to Nightcrawler's shadow, I have actual GERMAN here! Thanks so much, couldn't have done it without you! Now, as for the story, there'll probably be like maximum 12 chapters in total, and I'm going to TRY to get them all done before September 8****th****, when school starts, so they whould be coming fast =D And I'm have a few more flashbacks I need to get in, for the sake of plot, so pretty much every chapter I'm going to have will have one in it :P Once again, really huge thanks to everyone who reviewed and faved, you're all awesome! And enjoy the rest of this story. PS: the piano thing, someone tell me if it's been explored before at all in any way with Kurt.**

Evan was becoming frightened. Kurt had been in a strange, not essentially bad, yet rather peculiar mood all day, one which seemed to have steadily gotten better as the daylight hours progressed but now that it was night time, he had fallen asleep almost with the sunset, having half-kept his eyes open throughout dinner. And when the meal was over and he had nearly let three dishes slip from his grasp while trying to wash them, frankly, **in** his sleep, he had _walked_ up the stairs to his room and fallen asleep at the sink, on the tile floor of the bathroom, after having brushed his teeth. Evan had woken him up and gently walked him to his bed, which Kurt refused to do on two legs.

"Danke." He had said, followed by something that sounded like either like 'doktor' or 'bruder' just before his head hit the pillow and he sank deeply into unconsciousness. Evan was not sure whether to laugh at that or be utterly confused at the infantile misplacement. He decided to do a bit of both and then swiftly rejoined his friends back on the lower floor. But when he came back up, ready for a peaceful sleep after peaceful waking hours, he saw Kurt writhing and murmuring in his bed a second time with the curse of nightmares, the covers strewn on the floor around his bed appearing like cotton fog in the near-blackness.

"Warum... muss ich... sitzen auf... der Rückseite... der Kirche?" Evan heard, noticeably louder than the previous night, and clearer as well. Kurt's eyes fluttered, flickers of golden light illuminating his face and disappearing, and Evan froze for a moment, debating on whether to fully wake him up while his own eyes adjusted to the black room. All it took was one look at how childishly and fearfully the boy tucked his knees into his chest, and Evan sighed, reaching for his trusted linguistic tools, sleep once again forgotten. "Mama?" Kurt asked, adamantly repeating his question.

_Why do I have to sit in the back of the church? His mother looked over at him, sadness and anxiety flickering in her eyes as she answered. She was not too subtly looking around the parishioners who were sitting, heads bowed amongst the wooden pews of the old Church as they made their way past the vast expanse of them, to go towards the very back. A strange couple they must have made: A gypsy sorceress, her son, and her small companion, covered head to toe with an ominous black cloak._

"_Kurti... Sie wissen, warum." __You know why. Stephan was fully disinterested in the events happening in the church, and was oblivious to the conversation. Margali looked down at her youngest son, searching for offense in the beautiful gold eyes. She found none and gently ushered him into the pew at the back._

"_Mama." __He said, sounding very much as Margali did when disciplining him. He explained the rest to her with a careful, patronizing tone, as if dictating to a very young child. __"__Niemand wird zu glauben, __**dass**__ hier__." __No one is going to think __**that**__ here. Margali sighed as they both shuffled to the centre of the pew, skirts and robes shuffling against the lacquered wood._

"_Und warum nicht, Kurti? Warum sagen Sie das?" __And why not, Kurti? She asked, as they took a seat, speaking in anxious conversation. Why do you say that? Almost unnoticeably, Kurti rolled his eyes. _

"_Da Dämonen werden, können nicht in Kirchen. Es schmerzt sie. Und alle werden sehen, ich bin nicht verletzt__." __Because demons cannot enter churches. It hurts them. And everyone will see that I'm not hurt. _

_..._

_This was not what Margali expected to hear. She had expected to hear more of her son's naive rationalizations that had convinced her to take him to Church with her and Stephan in the first place, but she had not expected Kurti to know anything about demons, let alone bring it into the conversation._

"_Wo hast du gehört?" __Where did you hear that? Margali liked all things demonic to stay as far as possible from Kurti, lest he start believing the cries of the villagers. _

"_Ich lese sie." __I read it. Now that was surprising._

"_Sie lesen?" __Kurti nodded once more. __"Wo?" __Where?_

"_In diesen Büchern haben Sie in Ihrem Schreibtisch in den Zirkus__." __In these books you have in your desk at the circus. Margali stared. __**That**__ was unsettling. The books she kept in her desk at the circus were partly a visual aid to go with the mystical atmosphere of a gypsy sorceress she felt needed to be kept, but the texts themselves possessed powerful sorcery that she herself had been learning. The very fact that Kurti had seen those and read about demons, no less, was very disconcerting to her._

" _Kurti, __Reinhören, ich möchte nicht, dass Sie sich mit diesen Büchern wieder verstehen?"__Kurti, listen. I don't want you looking at those books again, understand? Kurti was about to open his mouth to ask why, but thought better of it and shrugged a yes, looking forwards devotedly as the priest began to read a sermon._

There was no screaming yet. That was a good thing, Evan presumed. Maybe it was a one-time occurrence; something that wouldn't happen again. Maybe he wouldn't have to watch Kurt the next night this happened, if this was normal. For now, he was just speaking, rather clearly and vividly, but still just speaking. Sighing, Evan knew he had to make sure. And, on cue, Kurt's lips parted once more for the sound of speech from eight years ago.

"_Warum, nicht, mama?" __Why not? he asked, a child's voice strong and pleading, though hissing a whisper to not be heard by the parishioners around._

"_Warum ja? Warum wollen Sie lesen über Dämonen?" __Why do you want to read about demons? She asked, anger seeping into her voice._

"_Ich möchte lernen, wie man denn nicht ein.__" __I want to learn how not to be one. Margali blinked. Kurti was full of surprises today. She'd never thought the taunts had gotten to him, had made him believe it himself._

"_Kurti-" __she began to admonish, but he stopped her._

"_Ich weiß, dass ich bin nicht ein. Aber ich möchte wissen, wieman anderen Menschen zeigen, dass auch.__" __I know that I am not one. He said, resulting in Margali's slight relaxation. But I want to know how to show other people that too. She opened her mouth to speak._

"_**Und,**__" __Kurti continued, as if the little speech was plainly simple, and impeccably logical,__ "__Eine der besten Möglichkeiten, dies zu tun in der Kirche ist.__" __One of the best ways to do that is in a church._

Evan scratched his head. That gesture, he'd always thought to be an unrealistic interpretation of the actions of people who are confused or overwhelmed by knowledge. But looking over once more at the written version of one side of a rather unorthodox conversation, he found that the confusion was like an itch that popped up in the very depths of his mind, and so he scratched his head, trying to reach it, while his eyes tried to process what was on the page in front of him. Kurt was in a church. OK. That much he could deal with.

He was plainly young, so he assumed that the other side of the conversation must be some kind of parental figure. As he recalled, a mother. Kurt didn't have a father, he'd told him once. Then, Kurt said he wanted to learn how not to be something so that he could convince others that he wasn't. And apparently, the best way to do that was inside of the church. Evan scratched his head again and watched the blue boy breathing steadily, easily in his sleep. _Easily for now. _He thought.

"_Lassen Sie alle Kinder kommen und werden gesegnet." __The priest called, beckoning with his arms. Let all the children come and be blessed. Kurti grinned at his mother, and she took notice of his smile, and how different he looked from the four year-old he'd been when all this demon nonsense first appeared. Baby fangs had fallen out and re-grown months ago, and sharper, longer canines were visible in the boy's bright smile. Features that used to be simply odd and endearing were becoming truly frightening at first glance as the boy developed. And when Kurti stood up, Margali yanked him back down by his sleeve, hoping no one noticed. By now, Stephan was listening in._

"_Nein! Was tust du?" __What are you doing? She hissed, sounding harsher than she had meant to. Kurti looked at over her with the new enlightened look he seemed to be developing._

"_Er ist ein __**Priester**__, mama. __Ich glaube, er wäre der einzige Mensch, der weiß, wer ein Dämon, und wer nicht.__" __He's a __**priest**__, mama. Kurti said simply, watching as Stephan joined the row of children at the front of the church. I think he would be the one person who knows who is a demon, and who is not. Margali paled. Her son wanted to go up there, go up with all the other children._

"_Nein, Kurti! Was passiert wenn..." __What happens if... She did not want to finish that sentence herself. If what? If her sainted, naive son was wrong about his evidently gross overestimations of humankind? If he would be seen? If a priest himself found Kurti a demon, amongst a crowded congregation, and then she along with Jemaine's mother, the _doktor_, would sew up Kurti for the second time since he was four? To break her thoughts, Kurti's yellow lights shone out from underneath his hood and he gently uncoiled the cloth of his sleeve from her hand. _

"_Vertrauren Sie mir?" __he asked her softly. Do you trust me? So stunned by the question itself, she was, that she paused, something that was a dearly horrible mistake. Kurti, misinterpreting the pause as an affirmation, as any child would, ran up between the rows of pews, folds of the cloak billowing around him like wings, and took his place amongst the other children there. Margali was frozen in place, praying in her mind, thoughts scattered. What was she praying for? Kurti was the one with the unshakable faith. Perhaps the fact that Kurti had so much faith was not a good thing. Perhaps that would be what got him hurt. And so she began to run up, up to her son, to the son she needed to protect from those he had so much faith would not harm him. When Kurti began to remove his hood, Margali closed her eyes, if only to miss the look of crushed hopes in Kurti's face when the kind, logical image of humanity he had implanted in his head came crumbling down in hordes of screaming..._

When Kurt arched, and erupted in a scream this time, Evan nearly fell over from shock. This one was louder, deliberate. Had the door been thinner, others may have been able to hear it, but as it was thick to accommodate those residents with advanced hearing, Kurt's screams ricocheted back into the room, filling it with cries of pain, as those around the two boys slept, oblivious. Kurt writhed and screamed in long-past torment, and Evan balked, useless. Kurt started to cry again, and he could only watch. He tried to find some deeper meaning in his words, but couldn't understand. Something about demons... Where was the demon? Was he the one hurting Kurt? That seemed very unlikely.

He tried to get closer to Kurt, but the elf was thrashing around so much it was nearly impossible. His tail whipped him rather hard in the face, and Evan held his cheek for a moment, stunned. He tried repeating what he had said last time.

"Du bist in ordnung. Alles sind in ordnung."No response. He turned on a light, desperate now. Maybe the light would wake Kurt up, he thought, though he knew it was a bad idea to wake someone during a nightmare. In the light, he saw Kurt straining through tears against impossible binds. He tried something else.

"Es gibt keine Dämonen hier." There are no demons here. He said this into Kurti's ear when he took a pause from screaming and response came as more signs of obvious agony. Then he let out another shriek, still unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, not loud enough to wake someone across the hall, and grabbed at his own arm, sweat slicking the fur down. When he moved his hand away, awkwardly leaving the cerulean hairs, Evan's eye still lingered to where it had been. What was that between the tufts of fur? It was quite visible there... a line? A scar? Evan's eyes trailed back to Kurt's face, which was half off a pillow soaked with liquid anguish.

"Ich bin nicht... ein Dämon!" he called out amongst his screams. Evan froze.** I** am not a demon? **I'm** not?That's who the demon was? Kurt? Was that why Kurt was screaming? Someone thought **he** was a demon? Evan tried one more thing... to wrap his arms around the writhing figure like he had done before. But when his arm got close enough to Kurt's body, he spasmed, and the arm brushed against his throat. Evan leaned forwards, accidentally passing his arm over Kurt's mouth and then two razors drove into his flesh and Evan pulled away, horrified. Kurt was still crying, but now to match the rhythm of his tears, Evan bled red tears of his own from two distinct puncture holes in his arm, from where he had been pierced by fangs. Stunned beyond reproach, he went haltingly to bandage his arm with toilet paper, finding no better tools than those crude ones, and listened to the screams that now held a new depth. What could have happened to Kurt that he would bite someone in a vivid nightmare about it happening? And what was that scar on his arm... Kurt was not capable of violence, this Evan knew for sure, yet the throbbing in his forearm taunted him, questioning how much of his friend was still a mystery to him.

_Margali sewed up the wound on Kurti's arm as he sat on the edge of the bathtub, sniffling. There were no words between the two, only pain and sympathy exchanging, darting between them like bullets with every passing moment. The needle went in and out of blue flesh, and Kurti cringed occasionally, squeezing the stem of his tail in one hand for comfort. The other few wounds had already been sewn up, and Kurti and Margali both were noticing that he was developing quite a collection of raised lines that marked his body, telling the story of the first few years of his life, a grotesque Braille. _

"_Ich bin fertig." __She announced, cutting away the final length of string. I'm done. She thanked the lord silently that the wounds were simple enough that she could do it herself, and not have to request aid of the _doktor._ Kurti promptly sniffled again, face still wracked with pain._

"_Kurti? Bist du in ordnung?" __Are you OK? What a stupid question, she chided herself. The boy'd been attacked by a church mob and denounced as a demon by a priest. Even for Kurti, that made it hard to be 'OK'. He sniffled again and wiped at his nose with a tissue, and then adjusted his position on the tub as Margali began to wrap the stitched up wounds with white bandaging. __"Kurti?" __He didn't look up._

"_Er war ein Priester, mama." __He was a priest. Ah, she thought, scolding herself and mouthing an apology as she squeezed too tightly and made Kurti flinch. Therein lies the problem. _

"_Nebbich!" __she asked, trying to keep a lighter tone. So what?_

"_Ein __**Priester**__, __und auch er dachte, ich wäre ein Dämon_**.**_" __A __**priest**__, and even he thought I was a demon. Margali shook her head, ever so slightly. Never should she have let Kurti talk her into church, and if she had, she should have been firmer, should have ran up there and grabbed him back, should have spared a little more of his innocence...__"__Und Priester sollen über Dämonen wissen.__"__he mumbled. And Priests are supposed to know about demons._

_Margali tsked with her tongue. __"Nun, ich denke, dass nicht." __Well, I guess that one did not. Kurti said nothing, but fiddled with the cross around his neck pensively, wincing rhythmically to the throbbing of his injuries. They sat in silence._

"_Kurti... __Sie __**weiß**__, dass er falsch war ... oder?__" __You __**know**__ that he was wrong... right? Kurti said nothing and merely fingered the cross, looking down at his bandaged body._

"_Kurti!" __He looked up sharply, eyes innocent and dreary as if he hadn't even heard the question. __"__Sie weiß__... oder?" __His eyes went past her, through her for a moment, as if in thought, and then turned back to her, morphing too slowly into a weak smile._

"_Ja!"__ he answered, just a little too late._

The nightmares inexplicably took a lot of energy out of Kurt, this Evan saw. So, to nobody's surprise, when his alarm went off and the blue boy slept soundly and deeply as it resonated throughout the mansion, Evan did him a kindness and turned it off, setting it to sound once again fifteen minutes from now, at three times the volume. He nursed the wound on his arm gingerly, seeing that it had bled through the toilet-paper binding and snuck into the med-lab. There, he rifled through the waxy, pearl coloured drawers until he found the antiseptic and bandaging he was searching for. When he was done, he walked through the halls, grateful there was no one up since he had gotten up at Kurt-time. Then he made his way to the breakfast area, Kurt's painfully loud alarm playing background music to his steps. There was a resonating beep, followed by a loud smash, a groan, and a lengthy stream of angry German.

Evan pulled out a series of clichéd breakfast foods, bread for toast, juice, and cereal and set to preparing them. As he moved around the kitchen slowly with the leaden feeling of drowsiness, he felt a presence come into the room, and turned to see Kitty come out of the ceiling and fall, phantasmal, to the floor. Her hair was curled and frizzy today, and looked somehow to be a lighter shade out of the awful ponytail she usually forced it into. She forced a sleepy smile at Evan and then poured herself a glass of juice.

"Morning." She said.

"Good morning." The toast popped out with a dig, stifling the bamf that sounded at the same time, and his proximity to the toaster masking the distinctive brimstone musk. Evan turned around, startled a little by Kurt's sudden reappearance. His fur was still slightly wet from a morning shower, making it a darker and harsher shade against tired, pale morning light.

"Morning, Kurt." He greeted.

"Hi, Kurt." He turned to them both, looking more exhausted than he had looked the day before and closed his eyes momentarily in a serene smile.

"Guten morgen..." he whispered.

"What?" Kurt opened his eyes.

"I said good morning." And then he set to filling a bowl to the brim with cereal, and drowning the flakes with liquid white.

Wolverine walked past the kitchen at the time, and also gave a greeting of the morning.

"Mornin', Evan. Kitty. Elf."

_Elf._

Evan lingered on that one silly nickname. _Elf._ Why, then, if with the pointy ears and goofy smile, did Kurt so adamantly insist throughout the passing night that he was not a _demon_? Kurt dug in to the cereal, pointedly ignoring the faint beep that signalled the completion of his image inducer's charging, and Evan looked at him, trying to see with impartial eyes. When he had first met Kurt, and he had watched his hood come off, he had admittedly been a little surprised. Possible startled for a moment. Even for mutations, Kurt's was extreme. But he never jumped to the conclusion of a demon. Should he have?

He noted his sharply his eyes glowed in the day, and marked that off as a trait that could be considered demonic. The fangs went onto that list as well, looking sharp and menacing as he opened his mouth to accept the next spoonful. Strange; he had never thought about Kurt's features in that light before. They were always just another part of what made Kurt... Kurt. At a startling epiphany, Evan realized how the forked tail resembled that of a devil he had seen in cartoons as a child, and how the three-fingered hands didn't help hide his distinctions. The digigrade feet as well came as shockingly animalistic, especially with the cloven toes, and how he ran in a gallop and perched, rather than sat with them, as he was doing now.

Of course, he saw the resemblance, more than subtle, to a classic demonic interpretation as he took in the dark blue fur that coursed over the entire strange anatomy, and saw how part of it disappeared in the shadows that danced across the kitchen floors. But he'd never feared him, never assumed that he _was_ a demon. There was too much kindness in the strange, uniform eyes, too much pureness and laughter in the fanged smile. **Elf** seemed more appropriate. Bustling with life and jolliness. Evan let his eyes blur and looked over at Kurt, trying to blur out the cross that hung as such a permanent fixture from his neck, and the ever-present spark of life.

And what he saw deeply resembled a monster. _This,_ he thought, sobered, _must be what people see when they see Kurt for the first time_. Someone- some_thing_ who looks exactly like a demon, something that looked like it had come straight out of hell and showed up in horror stories told to children. But how could they judge without knowing? How could they not look past the demon, and see, simply put, a very **human** soul? That, to Evan, who right away saw the true Kurt Wagner, seemed a strange reaction.

"Evan?" Kurt asked, pulling him out of his darkly analytic thoughts. His own expression was empathic. "Vat happened to your arm?" Evan looked back over to the bandaging, and the concerned friend who had put them there. _Then again..._ maybe **his** was the strange reaction.

Classtime. She talked to him now, liked him. Enjoyed their conversations. And he did, too, there was no denying that. Without the inducer, he noted, her words would still get a little cautious and jumbled _sometimes_, and it made it _slightly _harder for her to look at him in the eye, but that had diminished **greatly** since her rescue, and he was grateful for it.So with it, and even without it since he'd rescued her they were the best of friends. He had to wonder why she feared him to begin with when he had been promised by the professor that no one would, not here, not amongst people 'like him'. And he had believed him; same childish notions retained after all this time. Same stupid ideals that **here** would be better. Like he had said to his mother years ago. _"__Niemand wird zu glauben, __**dass**__ hier__."_

He had been wrong then, and he was wrong now. The only difference was that one experience had left him with scars as well as memories, scars reminding him of just how wrong he'd been. Which brought him back to why **his** words sometimes would slur together, and why his accent would thicken when he talked to her during one of these pleasant conversations. It seemed to him that fear and hate flowed into each other rather easily, and thought she seemed to be in neither category as of now, he wondered when hers would turn into the other one as well, when she would come to his door with knives or stakes or fire, and which side his friends would take when that day came. **If** that day came. There was a chance it wouldn't. He still believed in all those things that had gotten him hurt numerous times years ago, to a lesser degree since he turned nine, but that belief was part of him nevertheless.

"Kurt, I'm going to fail." She moaned, breaking him out of his somewhat scatterbrained thoughts and he noted, with a sort of negative surveillance that her hair was back in that terrible ponytail.

"No, you are not, Kätzchen."

"That's what you, like, said about German." He gave a wry smile.

"And vith me helping you, I vill be right." In truth, Kurt was having trouble staying awake. In comparison to the classes like History and English which seemed to just be noise to him over the past while, this was music.

And music **was** just noise. Gentle, lulling noise... He had signed up for music only because he needed one art class and visual arts and drama were out of the question. But they were doing theory, and Kurt stared at a blank page full of easy questions, not even noticing when his attention turned to the back of his eyelids instead. Kitty nudged him awake, seemingly over her aversion to physical contact with him.

"Ja?"

"That kid..." she said, pointing over to Fred Dukes, who was sitting in Scott's usual seat, focusing on his music theory paper like telepaths did as they moved something heavy. "he was in that car..."

"He fit into a car?" Kurt said, incredulous. "Zhat's amazing!" She punched him on the arm.

"No, elf." She tried out the nickname. "he was in the car with that blue lady. _Yesterday._" She said through her teeth, implicit. Kurt gave a wide-eyed nod of understanding, not caring about the boy looking over at his music paper.

"He's with zhe brozherhood. But vhy vould zhey vant to kidnap you?" Kitty shrugged and pried the paper from the kid's hands, giving him an indignant glare as she set to copying it for herself. Changing the subject, she asked Kurt a question, pulling her hair out of the eyesore hairdo, much to his pleasure.

"When did you, like, learn this stuff? You're like, one of the best in this class at theory." He smiled, remembering a tidbit of his life in Winzeldorf, how his mother would play the piano they had at the circus, and how he had begged to play as well, not realizing that three-fingered hands couldn't handle the complex melodies his mother's normal ones could. He recalled how she had spent countless waking nights, searching for songs that she painstakingly had proofread to ensure that no more than three fingers on each hand were used at any time. How she would come to teach him, bruises under her eyes from sleeplessness, how even the hardest ones she had found were all at a low level, how he had asked to learn harder ones when he surpassed them, how he didn't understand why she cried when he asked why the others were allowed but not him... never him...

"My mama taught me."

"Really? So, can you, like, play an instrument?" The bell rang and he closed his book shut with an audible slam.

"No."

"Guys, time for dinner!" was the call that sent the bustling crowd of mutant children to the table. Kurt sat, wearing his inducer, but tail swinging freely around, happily unrestrained, and they shared the news about Kitty's attempted kidnapping on the previous day.

"It was the brotherhood?"

"Ja."

"Y'all are sure?"

"Like, yeah!"

"Weird. We'll keep an eye on them."

"Good idea."

"Anyone seen Scott?"

"I think I saw him around..."

"Kurt, you were up later than usual today." Said Kitty. "It was weird, you're - pass the salt? Thanks.- you're usually up before me." Kurt retracted his tail, uncoiling it from the glass container of white crystals, and smiled a little as she didn't pay it any unkindly attention.

"I don't know, Kätzchen, overslept, I guess." His eyes were half-open again, and he ate his food slower, tiredly, plagued by a more powerful, more vivid memory than the first one he'd had in his sleep since Kitty's arrival.

"You just look kinda... tired, I guess." He smirked a cruel half-smile. _I am tired, Kätzchen. Tired of you looking at me like I'm a freak, tired of hiding, fear, tired of these verdammt nightmares, of not being able to tell anyone, just tired in general._

"Kurt." Evan waved a hand in front of his face, the hand he didn't know he had bitten, and the holographic eyes turned in his direction. "Man, you sure you're OK?" And Kurt paused for a moment, a look of deep exhaustion over him. Then once again, he turned his gaze to Evan and immediately shifted into a quick, smile.

"Ja, Evan." He said, once again, just a little too late.


	9. Chapter 9: Confessions and Conclusions

**SEMI IMPORTANT: A/N: 50 reviews yay =) Thanks to Caprichoso for being my 50****th**** reviewer and also for giving a review that helped a lot. Unfortunately, there'll be only 6 more chapters after this and I still have... 4 angsty flashbacks, But the next 2 chapters won't have any and the ones I do put in are gonna be put in creatively instead of the repetitive way I'm putting them in now. And I WILL finish this story DEFINITELY before Halloween, even though I'll be a freshman Tuesday (yay) and that will make it a challenge. I'd also like to mention dorkonx (my 51****st ****and 52****nd ****reviewer) personally for making me feel good and also, if you see any MAJOR errors, please mention them to me and ill edit the chapters. By the way, for some reason Destiny is living with the brotherhood in this story and again, Toad's name=his canon name.**

**EVAN**

OK, now this was getting ridiculous. The day before Kurt's birthday, for all intents and purposes, started at 3:00am for me. That was when I woke up because, for the third time _in a row_, my blue roommate was dreaming very... loudly. I had to wonder, was this the same nightmare over and over, or had there actually been three different events? Nonetheless, they all had a similar theme to them. This night, though, Rogue was awake, and heard something as she passed our room in her sleepless hall-wandering. She came over to the door, and pressed her ear to it, listening in.

"Evan..." she hissed through the thick wood. "Ya awake?" Not knowing what to answer, I merely let my mouth move for me, not really thinking, just sitting on my bed in abject pity.

"...Yeah."

"What's that sound? Is tha' you?" I looked over at Kurt, who had by now risen to such a volume that it could probably be very faintly heard in the halls, though definitely not loud enough to wake someone. Or so I hoped.

"Um... it's Kurt." I waited for a response, and I could almost feel her expression change through the thick door, her brows crease, her lips purse, her arms cross over her stomach. I waited for her to say something, make some noise. Leave, hopefully. But, instead, she did; said nothing.

Silence.

Sighing, I walked over to the door and turned the handle slowly before pulling the door open with as much speed as I could manage, releasing howls and cries into the hall for the briefest time, before pulling the girl in and shutting it, locking the noise in again. She flinched at the unexpected racket and then turned to me with horror.

"He's getting louder." I said, eyes on Kurt, staring. It seemed as I've been doing much of that lately. Staring. What else could I do in situations like this? Rogue nodded.

"Yeah, ah could hear him when ah got close to your room. And when ya opened the door, you're lucky that no one woke up." I agreed with her wholeheartedly and showed that in enthusiastically nodding my head ; someone waking up would not have been in Kurt's best interests. Or mine. Or Rogue's, at this point. So when there was a knock on the door, and Wolverine's voice drifted into the room, saying:

"Evan? Elf? What the hell's going on in there?" I pinched the bridge of my nose and walked towards the door.

Since when were the things that happened ever in my best interests?

"Um..." I said lamely. What else could I have said?

"You kids OK?"

"Yeah, Mr. Logan, we're fahne." Rogue said. Not the smartest thing to do, considering she wasn't supposed to be inside our room in the first place. I shot her a dirty look, and cringed back, waiting for a reply.

"...I'm coming in." And come in he did, closing the door behind him as fast as me, and then momentarily freezing, before turning to us with an unreadable expression.

"What the hell's wrong with elf?" He asked, properly confused. I massaged the bridge of my nose.

"He has nightmares."

"Not always like _this?_" he asked, not really a question.

"Nope, this is his third like this." I said, ever the knowledgeable roommate. Wolverine watched as Kurt turned rapidly to the side, bent into himself inhumanly, and paused from crying out in howls to screaming out actual words raw with emotion and pain, and then he arched again, frighteningly fast, and whimpered, falling quiet, repeating what he'd said before as he wet the fur around his eyes.

"What's he saying?"Rogue asked. To wolverine, for some reason. Despite the circumstances, that was a little offensive.

"I'm not sure."

"He's saying that he's not a demon." I said. I was actually kind of getting used to the phrase now, strange as that was. All eyes turned to me now, and I turned back to them, lips tight, tongue unsure of what to do behind them. I raised my shoulders in a knowing shrug as Kurt hugged his tail, oblivious to his observers. Wolverine was watching with a thoroughly troubled expression and uneasily shifted his weight.

"Why's he sayin' _that_?"

"I have no idea." I answered truthfully. "But he says it a lot in these."

"Shouldn't we... wake him up?" Wolverine moved closer to the bed, muttering vaguely comforting things as he did so. 'Easy, elf.' Or 'I ain't gonna hurt ya.', to deaf ears. His heavy steps were cautious as he tried to plan exactly what he would do when he got there, got to the edge of the bed. Having tried this before, or something almost the same, I put a hand on his shoulder, shaking my head. I held up my arm.

"That's a bad idea." He looked over at my arm, and then at Kurt's moving mouth, connecting the two in his mind. I was unsurprised at the weird expression that crossed his face then. It was a weird image.

"Elf... bit ya."

_No,_ I thought, bitterly. _**Demon **__did._ His actions seemed to die down a bit, before there was noise in the room once more. "That's it." Wolverine walked over to him and yanked the sheets off of the bed, pulling a sweat-drenched Kurt down with them, onto the floor. The sounds stopped completely, much to my relief, and Kurt opened his eyes, waiting for his breathing to slow to a regular, lighter, rhythm, and wiped at his eyes, throwing his head down exasperatedly onto the mess of sheets. He ran his hands down over his entire body, as if to make sure it was still there. He bit at his lip gently and put a hand to his heart.

He turned his eyes to us then, seemed to register we were there, and his face changed immediately. It was amazing to watch, really, the way he composed himself to look as if nothing had happened, the way he put on a mask of normality and even gave a small smile, though he was damp with sweat and the whole room smelled of fear.

"Hey, guys." He said. We all stood on edge, waiting for something to happen, some kind of breakdown. It seemed only natural. Instead, he looked to us with those same haunted, deceptively casual eyes. In a breaking voice: "Vhat's up?" He said, and then leaned over, and retched.

*************************************************************************************

Kurt didn't go back to sleep. Instead, he spent the next few minutes brushing his teeth and turning purple as he watched Rogue go off to wash his blankets and sheets, watched Evan awkwardly stand around before Wolverine told him to go to sleep, and was now inside his bathroom, knowing that Wolverine was outside of the door, waiting. He slid down silently to the floor, resting his head against the cool marble wall, cooling his brow.

"Elf," he called. "I know you're not doing anything in there. Come out." After a beat.

"Um, no thank you. I vould prefer to stay here." A sigh.

"Elf, I'm stayin' here till you come out."

"Vhy?" he asked, searching for an escape route. The window, perhaps? It was tempting, and it was still night outside, meaning that escape from Logan would not be too difficult.

"Cause, either you talk to me now, or I go to Charles. Or _Storm._" Kurt squeaked.

"Please... don't." Logan sighed, his half-bluff somehow backfiring.

"Well, can you come out? ...Please?"

The door opened slowly, the light never having been turned on, and Wolverine was face to face with a very defeated looking Nightcrawler.

"...I am out."

"I see that. Come on, let's sit down and, uh, talk." He hung his head and walked with Wolverine towards his room, not wanting to wake Evan, and the thick, polluting smell of sweat and vomit too much for either one to bear.

They sat on the bed and he closed his own door, waiting for Kurt to sit on the bed. He turned around. Or the bedpost. Kurt perched, dread in his eyes, and tried t make an excuse.

"Herr Logan, I'm going to a picnic vith everyone in... eight hours. Can I get back to sleep...?" Logan gave him a look.

"Elf, we both know you weren't gonna go back to sleep anyways." He didn't respond but met his eyes, appraising him as an enemy, not a friend. Logan sat down.

"So, why don't you tell me what in the hell you were dreamin' about that got to the point that Evan wouldn't let us touch ya." He decided to ignore the part where Evan had claimed that he was bitten. He did not see how that could in any way benefit the situation.

"How did you know I vas dreaming?" he asked, still trying to evade the conversation.

"...Elf."

"OK, so I vas dreaming." He grumbled, feeling that Wolverine would not mind rudeness at the moment. "_You_ never talk in your sleep?"

"I don't scream in my sleep." He snipped, and judging by the way Kurt cringed and turned a grotesque shade of purple, that was not the right thing to say.

"I screamed?" Logan nodded. And clicked his tongue, the silence swelling between them.

"So what were you dreamin' about?" Kurt met his eyes, and Logan was surprised by the boy's hateful stare, the fiery fierce glow of his usually bright eyes. Kurt had a moment of contemplation, and then silently slid down from the bedpost to land on the floor, eyes still burning with that predatory light.

"You von't tell anyone?" he asked, voice weak by now, tail curled into a noose. Logan grunted an affirmation.

"Sure, elf."

She raised the faint blue boxers that he slept in slightly on the left side, and Logan quirked a brow. He then rolled the fabric so that is stayed there, exposing his whole leg. And then he clawed his hands, curving his fingers, and separated the fur like a part in a thick line down the length of his leg. Logan squinted, and his eyes went cold as he saw what the boy was trying to show him. The thick, sick, nearly black line that coursed down blue flesh, looping from the thigh to the side hock.

"Zhis, _Herr_ Logan." He said then, accent heavy with cold words. "Zhis is vat I vas dreaming about."

*************************************************************************************

"Bobby." The boy said, a hiss and a nudge in the darkness, and waited for the elder to wake up. He managed to turn Bobby to his side for a brief moment, successfully halting the droning sound coming from deep in his throat, and then he allowed him to turn back to how he was before, and the droning sound returned. The boy sighed. "**Bobby.**" He pushed him again and his mouth just fell open wider, releasing more droning into the room.

Sighing, Evan closed his mouth manually and plugged his nose, and soon received the phlegm-laden startled sound of someone being choked awake. Bobby looked over at the boy and glared.

"What do you want, Evan?"

"Are you going to the picnic thing?"

"**No**."

"Oh. Is Scott?" he pointed to an empty bed in the other side of the room.

"How the hell should I know? He's not even here."

"Well where did he go?" A sigh and a quick glance at harsh, unforgiving red numbers at his bedside came as a response."Is Jean?"

"I think so. Can I go back to sleep now?" Evan sighed.

"Yeah, you can go back to sleep now." Almost immediately, the boy turned to his side and resumed his droning, while Evan walked out, cringing at the premise of waking up Jean. He snuck into her room, though, and tiptoed over. She was asleep.

"Jean?" he asked, pushing her to the side as well. She awoke immediately, and sent a pillow flying through some means at Evan's head.

"Snrf?" she asked, yawning. "What are you doing, Evan?"

"Did you make anything for that picnic?" She groaned and buried her face in her pillow before rising back up, hair askew and shielding her face like a mourning mask.

"No. Forgot."

"Well it's today. Come on, I forgot too and no one will let us eat if we don't bring anything." A sigh and then a hand roughly brushed the hair out of her face.

"All right, fine, let's go. But YOU get to cut the onions."

*************************************************************************************

There were four conclusions the girl had come to about travelling alone during her lengthy journey. One: Yes, it **was **a good idea to check which airport the plane went to, despite what her friends had said. She had excitedly sat on the plane, in too much of a state of eagerness to eat or drink; and had wound up at the wrong one, and then, once she had rented a car, had to scour the airport for someone who could help her. Which led to the second conclusion: always accept coffee when given the option. So, in her exhausted state, she'd somehow managed to rent a car and discover that she was still hours away from the original airport. And then she began driving in search of the nearest place to ask for directions. That essentially led to the third conclusion: When asking for directions, it is always better to make sure that you're pronouncing everything right, or else you might end up lost on the highway. And so came the fourth and final conclusion: It was, despite the common notion, not easy, nor smart, to drive and read a map at the same time.

The highway lamppost lights whizzed by her, strikingly bright in the black night and a shock to sleepy eyes. One hand was firmly clasped against the tough leather of the steering wheel, while the other held a map with infuriatingly tiny print upright for the girl to read. There was no sound but that of tires on concrete, and wind pressing against the forward motions of the car, roaring at loss as the metal behemoth journeyed on. The girl looked at the road in front of her: It seemed to be relatively straight, and no signs indicated that there would be a turn anytime soon, so she turned her eyes cautiously to the map, trying to find her own highway squiggle amongst all the tiny words.

Aha! _There_ she was. Her eyes followed a series of lines to nearly the other side of the map before landing at a purple circle she had drawn to mark her destination. And there was where she was supposed to be. Sighing, she gripped the wheel, thinking of the only reason she'd decided to be stupid enough and go on this journey, and turned it slightly, adjusting to the left drift she seemed to have taken. She went back to staring at the night in front of her and how the night soared on...

************************************************************************************

Kitty woke up with the unwelcome sound of the alarm clock drilling into her skull. Crushing the snooze button under the awesome weight of her hand, she buried her face in the pillow with a groan, and then looked up, eyes red and hair scraggly, to see that Rogue was no longer in her bed, and instead there was a neatly made pile of blankets with a green sheet over it mocking Kitty, telling her to get up. With another groan, she complied and then took a short shower, dressing quickly and urgently.

A knock on her door made her jerk her head towards it and call: "Come in!" as she brushed her hair in the mirror. BAMF and he did. She looked into the mirror, and he stood behind her, visible only as a silhouette. She raised a brow.

"Kätzchen, are you ready?"

"Yeah, like, almost."

"Vell... hurry up. Rogue is getting... impatient." And then she raised the second.

"Rogue is?" He nodded, affirmation. "Why, how long has she been waiting?"

"I don't know how long, but she has everything set up already, and keeps complaining zhat zhere vas no point to her- and I quote- doing zhis all at the crack of dawn if nobody is going to show up for it." Now the brows went down, slanting questioningly.

"_Rogue_ got up early to prepare a picnic." The elf in her room nodded. "And _Rogue_ is now waiting for us..."

"In zhe backyard, ja."

"...OK, I'll be right there, fuzzy-elf." And then he bowed, half-jokingly, and disappeared. When she got to the backyard of the mansion, she looked past the other students to see a small table amongst a few small hills, and Rogue sitting, true to Kurt's word, at a nicely prepared picnic table, looking vaguely irritated. Kitty walked over at just about the same time Kurt teleported in with Jean and Evan. He released his grip on them both, and all three of them set down a small Tupperware container or bowl of something down onto the little table that rogue had prepared with plastic cutlery, complete with red checkered cloth.

"Ah'm so glad you fahnally decided ta show up." She sarcasmed, as Kurt pulled out a lawn chair for Jean.

"Like, sorry, Rogue. When did you get up?" She exchanged a look with Kurt, who shied away from her eyes.

"Oh, ah've been up for a whahle." Kurt pulled a chair out for Kitty, and she lowered herself on to it, blushing.

"Um, thanks." She said. And he grinned and bowed again, much to Rogue's amusement. Jean cleared her throat.

"**So**, what did you guys bring?" she asked, darting between all the faces, addressing them all and none of them at the same time.

"Ah brought _soup_." Rogue stated, evidently proud of her culinary achievement. "And meatballs."

"I, like, brought this." Kitty said removing the cover on a container that held various store-bought goods. Kurt brought a rather intricate-looking meat cake that he assured everyone was merely beef. Jean and Evan displayed a salad and a series of misshapen pork meatballs that Evan tried to ensure, were perfectly edible as Jean glared at him, clearly dissatisfied with something that had happened in their preparation.

"Has _anyone_ seen Scott recently?" Jean asked. "I can't find him anywhere. The professor told me to ask around, but I can't find him _anywhere_."

"No, he wasn't in his room last night." Said Evan.

"Ah'm sure he'll turn up. But ah'm hungry so let's look for him **after** the food is gone." With a shrug, the others agreed to the plan, and the picnic began. *************************************************************************************

"LANCE!"

"WHAT?"

"GET THE DOOR!"

"IT HASN'T-" *knock* *knock* *knock*. Lance blinked and reluctantly got up from his comfortable position in front of the television, putting out his cigarette on the passing ashtray along the way. "Fucking precogs..." He unlocked the door, and swung it open, letting himself be face to face with 4 angry adult X-men.

"Hello, Mr. Alvers." Said the bald one, the leader of the pack. "is Mystique home?"

"Um... no... I am, and I think Mort is. Hold on." He shut the door almost all of the way. "TOAD!" A distant:

"What!"

"The um... professor and... the other 3 are here."

"What? Which other three?"

"Wolverine, the black babe with white hair, and the blue guy!"

"...Nightcrawler?"

"No, the other blue guy! They're all here!"

"What the hell, yo? Why?"

"Um..." Lance opened the door again, and addressed the professor. "He wishes to know the... nature of your visit." Logan scoffed and Storm slapped him on the arm.

"We were wondering if you've seen Scott Summers? He is one of our students and we can't seem to find him." She held up a hand deliberately between her and Wolverine's own heads. "Brown hair, about this height..."

"Yeah, we know him. _I_ haven't seen him, but I'll ask, hold on."

"Why on earth is he talking like that?" Hank asked, grumbling. "It is making it considerably more irritating to maintain a conversation with the boy."

"With all due respect, Hank, you _really_ shouldn't be making fun of how people talk."

"Logan, Henry, both of you calm down. He doesn't know how to speak to us in these circumstances."

"Well, Henry is right, Charles." Ororo added. "It _is_ a little unnerving. Are you listening in, Logan?"

"Yup. Now shh, 'Ro."

"TOAD!"

"WHAT!"

"They wanna know if we've seen Summers!"

"...The X's said that?"

"Yeah! And I'm afraid Wolverine's gonna slice my balls off soon. So **think**: HAVE YOU SEEN SUMMERS?"

"No, man! I HAVE NOT SEEN SUMMERS!"

" 'K then!"

"What did they say, Logan?"

"They said-" the door creaked open.

"I'm sorry, no, we haven't seen him. Do you... have a message you'd like me to deliver to Mystique?"

All eyes went on the professor as he focused his momentarily empty gaze back on Lance. "No, that's quite all right. Thank you."

"Anytime." The door sent a push of air into their faces as it slammed quickly shut.

"Were they telling the truth, Charles?"

"Their shields were up... that's strange."

"You suppose they're hiding something?"

"...I'm not sure. Perhaps I will try again later."

*************************************************************************************

Toad crept down the stairs, peeking from in between the columns holding up the banisters. "Yo, did they leave?" Lance nodded and the other boy jumped smoothly over the rails, landing in a crouch. Both slowly peeled back a carpet to expose a trapdoor and crept inside. They descended the stairs to see Mystique lying on the floor, legs swinging above her back like a schoolgirl, as she moved a pen over a piece of paper, awfully slowly.

"Pietro," she said, squinting her eyes as she made the elongated loop on an L, tracing it carefully. "pass me the third one." The boy ruffled through a series of sheets, and then, grasping one around the edges like a photograph, handed it to the woman. She didn't look up. "How did it go?"

"Good. I asked Mort if he'd seen Summers."

"And what did you tell him?" she asked, now addressing the other boy.

"I said that I didn't." She smiled.

"Good."

"Mmmmm... Kur', 'ese beef fingth... ah a'a'ing!" Kurt blinked.

"Danke... I zhink."

"I said these beef things are amazing."

"Ah, vell zhen zhank you, Jean. Your meatball zhings are very good too." Kitty, upon these words, decided to put her plastic fork to good use. She stabbed into one of the misshapen delicacies, and brought it close to her mouth, taking a whiff of the delicious, sweet and sour aroma. She brought it closer to her mouth then, and closed her eyes as the sun reflected off her necklace, stinging her eyes. She opened her mouth, and then the fork disappeared from her grasp and she inhaled sulphuric smoke and coughed as it filled her lungs. When she opened her eyes, she was staring, utterly confused, at Kurt, who stood a few feet away, her fork in his tail, a look of pure horror on his face.

"...Um..." Jean looked as confused as Kitty felt, and she paused in mid-chew, looking over at Kurt. Evan and Rogue continued eating, shrugging it off.

"Kurt..." Kitty began, fingers flexing around empty air. "what are you doing?"

"Kätzchen, you cannot eat that." She nodded slowly.

"Ok... and why not?"

"Zhat has _pork_ in it, Kätzchen." He said, stalking over. She pulled the fork out of his grasp.

"Yeah... so?" Evan dropped his fork.

"Kitty, aren't you..." he pointed to the necklace around her neck. "you know, Jewish?"

"Oh, yeah. So?"

"Well, you can't eat pork... right?"

"Oh, well, I guess, but I don't, like, follow that."

Now it was Jean's turn to be surprised.

"Really? We all... kind of assumed you did." Kitty gripped her plastic utensil, and readied to put it in her mouth again, and Kurt stopped her using his own fork like a sword.

"**KURT.**"

"Ja?"

"Just, like, let me eat the damn pork thingy."

"But, Kätzchen, vy vould you go against your faith?"

"I don't really, like, **have** a faith, you know?"

"Hey!" said Evan suddenly, knowing where this was going. "Let's **not** have a religion-based discussion at the picnic!"

"Ah kinda wanna see where this goes." Rogue said, smirking. Evan sighed and stuffed some food into his mouth, absently playing with the hem of the checkered cloth.

"Vat do you mean you don't have a faith? You don't believe in _Gott?_" Kitty cringed.

"No..."

"Vy not?"

"I don't know... I just don't."

"Zhen vy do you vear that necklace?"

"... I don't know. It was, like, a gift."

Kurt gently relinquished his sword-hold on her fork and Kitty popped it into her mouth with a satisfied smile.

"So you don't believe in heaven?"

"Nope."

"_Hell?_" Rogue bit back her tongue. Wisely.

"Nope, not really."

"Not really?"

"Well, I mean, I _kind _of do. I don' know, it's hard to, like, explain."

"What about souls?" asked Evan, suddenly intrigued. Jean looked over at him, and he held out his hands in mock surrender. _I was curious._ He thought at her.

"I don't know... souls? No, not really? What does this have to do with me, like, eating pork?"

"I don't know much about Judaism, Kätzchen, but I zhink zhere are souls involved."

"So, to save her soul, she shouldn't eat pork?" Jean asked. Kurt shrugged.

"Couldn't hurt." He said. "Judaism, Catholicism, it all leads to zhe same thing." Evan balked.

"My head hurts. Didn't know you were _that_ religious, fuzzy." Kurt shrugged and Kitty adamantly popped another pork ball into her mouth.

"I'm _going_ to convince you, Kätzchen." He vowed, eyes gleaming. She grinned.

"Fuzzy elf, you can try."

*************************************************************************************

"'Ro!" Logan called, picking up a sheet of paper from Scott's bed. The paper was written in Scott`s at script, and he quickly read it over, growing antsy.

"Yes, Logan?" Storm's head popped into the room.

"Come here and look at this." She dutifully walked over, heels mutely clicking on carpeted floorings, and leaned over Logan's shoulder to scan the note.¸

"Charles!" she called, and grasped the note, walking to the professor's office. The doors swung open with a gust of wind, and the professor's head shot up from behind his desk. Ororo walked over to him and placed the paper on his desk.

"Ah, so it seems Mr. Summers has decided to take an unannounced leave. How... suspicious."

"Yeah, that's what I thought. But it`s in his writing... and it smells like him. There's a fingerprint though, we can get Hank to check it."

"Yes," agreed the professor. "Let's do that and _then _jump to conclusions."

*************************************************************************************

Meanwhile, the girl gripped the wheel still and drove on, a day and a bit away... Her mind was a mess right now, sleepless and smartly loaded on caffeine, but one thought crossed her mind as she slowly went insane from seeing nothing but the expanse of concrete and flashing road signs. She was going to be late.


	10. Chapter 10: Spamming and Fingerprints

**A/N: haha now that everyone claims to be confused (as was my evil plan), here's another chapter which will either further confuse you or clear some stuff up. And on a personal note: I became a freshman on the 8****th**** so I wrote this to celebrate since there was no homework. : ) By the way, there will be no more updates until the eighteenth at the earliest; I'm writing for a challenge that I have no chance of winning, ant it's due on the sixteenth. So, on that note, sorry this chapter's a bit short, but please enjoy and I'd be happy with some reviews :) **

*************************************************************************************

The laptop screen flashed green and purple light as soon as she opened it; raised the lid and signed in her name. As soon as she did that, it glowed and the words appeared clear as day, black on neon green.

**YOU HAVE ****17**** MESSAGES**

Kitty blinked against the sudden brightness and shifted her legs before the bottom of the device pulsed too much meat onto her thighs. Twenty two e-mails was strangely many when the only messages she ever received were either from her parents, a school friend or two, and various companies that had her on their spam list. Kitty slid her hand over the smooth square dent that was a mousepad, and pressed down two quick taps in succession, clicking the little blue **INBOX** button. The page loaded... loaded... and materialized.

'_What the hell...?' _

Seventeen e-mails, as promised, were in a neat stack on the screen. But that was not all. They were all from one source, and had no subject on any of them. Blue eyes did a quick scan over the send times, revealing averagely fifteen minute intervals between each message, hours between the first and last. Which was strange considering they were all from one source, an unknown: _._ Kitty clicked the first one. The first part of the e-mail was the copy/pasted version of a newspaper article, with seemingly random sections of text highlighted in nauseatingly bright yellow for reasons unknown to her. Kitty leafed through the article and immediately pursed her lips in sceptical disapproval. It was a story about a girl, told from a reporter's viewpoint, a girl who'd sold her soul to a friend for twenty dollars using a contract the two made on a piece of notebook paper and signed with blood. The reporter goes on to quote the girl, who told of how she'd endured several strange happenings that followed the signing of that paper. These occurrences ranged from ones as mundane as never not being cold, not even in steaming, bubbling Jacuzzi water, and constantly being hungry no matter how much she ate, to utterly chilling ones; not having the ability to laugh or a reflection in the mirror.

It goes on to say how the mortified girl (whom Kitty strongly disliked from this article) eventually bought it back from her friend, and all but the hunger disappeared, and that that too abated when she ate the paper itself. Below that was a link to the actual online article, and then what appeared to be a small series of bible quotes, that too, were sickeningly yellow. Kitty moved her hand.

**MESSAGE DELETED**

Next was a slightly different story (again sectionals highlighted, with a link and quotations below) under the same general theme. Only this time, it was of a boy who'd claimed 'the lord above' had made him invisible to a burglar's eyes when the man, having four prior murder convictions under his file, broke into his home. The boy said the man had climbed in through his window with a knife in hand, looked directly past him, and then gone downstairs, leaving him unscathed.

**MASSAGE DELETED**

And then 14 more were all swiftly sent to a cybernetic graveyard. Something instinctual or maybe curiosity made her keep the last one and made her read it, made her wonder who was, though she knew she should have figured it out by now and though she had a thought in the back of her mind that was clawing its way to the front. **This** one was different than the others and she knew it was because before the article, _kw _had written PLEASE READ in big letters which looked like pleading wide eyes. Kitty began to read, taking a breath. It was considerably shorter than the other one and read simply this:

**In 1993, in St. Clemen's hospital, Boston, a boy was born to Nicki and Paul Aronsroet**

**at 7:34pm. The boy was named Tyler Andrew Aronsroet on sight and the delivery went**

**smoothly; without any complications. Tyler was wrapped in a soft blanket**

**and handed over to his mother like any other baby boy, but when Nicki **

**Aronsroet pulled it back to look at her son, both she and papa Paul burst into tears. Tyler **

**Aronsroet, beneath the sheets, was horribly disfigured. Tests were conducted immediately, **

**but they all revealed him to be human, making the blow that much harder for Nicki and **

**Paul. Tyler was born with one leg half the length of the other, and the bones of both were**

**twisted, crooked, and constantly sore, confining the boy to severe leg braces. His back was hunched**

**over and the bones of the spine were abnormally dense, making it very difficult to bend. **

**The boy's entire skin was thick and hard, and his face was contorted in a way that **

**rendered him unable to smile. He could barely move and the conditions were inoperable. **

**This condition, though no one has been afflicted with it since, was**

**later called 'The T.A. Aronsroet Deformity' by Doctor Lorelai Ryu.**

**At the age of six, Tyler was watching with his father, and saw a woman**

**diver dive into a pool, doing a triple aerial that amazed the boy. That same day, **

**he attempted to simply dive, without the flips, into his own pool and nearly drowned.**

**When his mother asked him why he jumped, Tyler responded simply: "It was what I was meant to**

**do." By age nine, he had memorized every diving trick possible, learned the aerodynamics of **

**them all, and knew the best divers in the business by name and face.**

**At age fourteen, Tyler became an assistant coach at his high school's diving team, and **

**the school's rankings improved dramatically. The coaches themselves placed him on their wall of**

**fame; he was so well respected there. One day, a few months later, when the Aronstroets **

**went to church, Tyler asked his mother if he could join the team himself. **

"**He told me that he had 'A diver's soul trapped inside his reject's body.'" Says Nicki Aronstroet, **

**in tears. His father, Paul had this to say: **

"**[Tyler] started saying it more and more in his sophomore year. Soul meant to dive. **

**And he was serious about it too. I thought it was good for [Tyler] to have some faith, you know?**

**The lord in his life. We both did." Everyone who knew him had said, in more or less **

**the same phrasing that when he spoke about diving, it would have been one of the few times**

**where he would have surely been smiling had he the ability. No one knows, to this day**

**what triggered it, but one day, at age sixteen, Tyler hung a cross around his neck, and stood on**

**the family roof, leg and back braces off for the first time in his life. The pool **

**had been merely a few feet away from being directly **

**underneath the roof. The note left on his kitchen table had said it all. Two words that would haunt **

**Nicki and Paul to this day: Triple aerial. And when **

**the Aronstroet family had found Tyler, lying dead and broken on the bloodstained**

**grass, the doctors couldn't explain it, but he had been grinning like a fool.**

Something made Kitty choose to keep this message, and then she read what had been below it, below the link.

_You said I could try_

_~Fuzzy elf._

*************************************************************************************

Bobby was currently watching Kurt swinging back and forth with a kind of shocked curiosity. He was watching the boy, sixteen tomorrow, swinging steadily back and forth. On a chandelier.

Upside down.

By his tail.

While reading a _book_. It was making Bobby nauseous. Because it was late, the only light was from the light near Bobby's chair that he had turned on so _he_ could read a book before he went to bed and he could only tell where Kurt was by the slow creaking sound of the chandelier, the vague silhouette, and the moving lights of his eyes as they went back and forth. Abruptly, Bobby stood up, turned out the light, and went to bed. _"Don't get it..."_ he muttered. _"Reading in the __**car**__ makes me throw up..." _and he left, and Kurt was happily reading alone in the night, the sounds of clinking swords and pirate banter imagined in his head.

Kitty came through the ceiling then and spied the devil pendulum that was Nightcrawler, letting out a quiet breath before the gold lights turned to her. She froze for the slightest moment under their scrutiny... those golden eyes like cleansing fire...

Kitty cleared her throat.

"Kurt?"

"Ja?"

"Did you, like, spam my inbox with a bunch of articles?" Fangs glistened in the night.

"Ja..." She turned on the light. Her eyes barely caught the series of inhumanly agile moves he made to come down from the chandelier.

"Why?" and then she interrupted him, knowing full well that was a stupid question. "When did you even have time to?"

"Ve came home from zhe picnic, and I vent onto Scott's computer."

"And you've been doing that till, like, now?" He nodded, hair falling around his face.

"Well then, why did it take you _so_ long to write each message?" The smile fell a little, and was replaced with an expression akin to condescending. Playfully condescending, but somehow dark in its own way. He held up his hands, three thick fingers waggling in her face. _Huh?_

"Zhree fingers. Make it..." he turned his hands around both ways like he was looking them over."a little harder to type, ja?"

_Oh._ "I... see." She said, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear. A beat passed as he brought his fingers back down and put them behind his back. "Are you going to send me more spam?" she asked suddenly and his mouth trembled upwards and she was reminded suddenly of those cartoon characters whose mouths would turn into a wavy line before they bust out into cartoon laughter. So Kurt. She was tempted to smile herself at the thought, but refrained.

"Zhat depends." Kitty rolled her eyes and crossed her arms.

"On _what_?"

"Did you delete zhe ones I sent you?" Kitty thought back to the article of the diver boy, stowed away in her inbox like a dirty little secret and for some reason felt it must stay one.

"Yes." And then the wavy line of his blue lips transformed into another oddly dark expression, this one a grin. She stared at those lips and then realized she was doing it, before meeting his eyes again.

"Zhen yes." And BAMF.

*************************************************************************************

The girl had done what she imagined was one of the stupidest, poorly thought out plans ever. When the night was almost over, and she felt the impending sunrise through her jetlagged state of mind and with it the thought that she would have to bear another whole day, she had pulled over to the side of the highway, stepped out of the car, bashed in the door with a bat she carried in her trunk, gotten back in, and fallen asleep.

_[There's no harm]._ She thought. [_If I get woken up, I'll say I was in an accident and was knocked out sand that's why I'm asleep in the side of the highway.] _She saw it then: _[No, of course I'm not a stupid tourist who didn't sleep or drink any coffee and got lost and decided to fall asleep on the side of the road. Only a total __**idiot**__would do that.]_

So she pulled the coat she'd used as a blanket off of her, and was grateful there were still no cars on the road and that no one had stopped to wake her though she wondered if that was a good thing; supposing she had been really hurt? But she pushed the thought aside and stretched, gazing over her map again. Her eyes lit up as she folded it back into a tiny square. She had been closer than she thought. Only a _few_ more hours, and the sun wasn't even up yet. She could still make it in time. Coming out of the car, she bent down in a crouch and examined the dent she'd left in her sleeplessly warped logic. She cringed; it was bigger than she thought. Driving in this state, she would be sure to get some strange looks from the locals. And she needed good relations with the locals; they had directions they could give her. And she was on a limit. Taking a deep breath, she remembered the warning words she'd been given before coming.

'[Don't do it. Don't even **think** it. They're idiots; they'll think you are a mutant, and you won't be able to protect yourself if they do. You're not good enough for that yet.]' And she'd agreed. But no one would see, and she could probably do it, just this once, if she concentrated. Her head turned rapidly to the left, and then the right and the empty expanse of concrete proved to be free of possible threats.

She got to her knees in front of the car, and said a quick prayer. She looked over the dent, deep in the metal of the car, and pressed her hands lightly to it. She closed her eyes, breathing steadily and deeply, and blocked out all the sounds around her.

At her touch, the metal scraped and began to move back into form...

*************************************************************************************

"You've told the children about Scott's message?"

"Yes, Ororo, I was sure to."

"Do we have the results yet?"

"No, Logan. Just a little longer."

"I don't understand, why do they need Scott?"

"Assuming, 'Ro, that they kidnapped him."

"Right."

"Well, I don't know, Ororo. Information, maybe."

"What does _Scott_ know?"

"Ha ha. Very funny, and **so** appropriate, Logan."

"Sorry."

"He knows a lot, really, blueprints, passwords, everything we all know. It's really not a bad plan, if they did kidnap him."

"They are just trying to get whatever information they can?"

"Yep."

"A little simple, no? Charles?"

"Not really. They tried to kidnap Kitty a few days back, remember?"

"So why did they go for Cyke next? They coulda gotten whatever they needed outta Kitty."

"What does _Kitty _know?"

"Oooh, very mature, `Ro."

"He was the easiest target at the moment, I suppose."

"Hm..."

...

"...Are the results ready yet?"

"Just a little longer."

*************************************************************************************

"Kurt? Kurt, where the hell are you?" Evan scoured the halls and tried with futile effort to search in every shadow he saw. There was a mild shuffling sound in one of the rooms and Evan groped the walls blindly before he found the doorway. He peeked inside to see Kurt perched on a computer chair, looking every inch as if he would fall off. The white light of the screen shone eerily on fur.

"**Kurt!**" he hissed. Kurt turned his head slowly towards the boy and Evan was unnerved by the unnatural movement, resisting the slight urge to retreat. He acknowledged Evan's presence and turned back to the white screen.

"Was, Evan?" He looked utterly focused on slowly pressing his fingers down on the keyboard, so carefully, even his tail was making slow, calculated movements to aid in his concentration. The keys made slow clacking noises that rhythmically broke the night silence. "Vhy aren't you asleep?" _click, clack, clack, clickety clack._

The boy stammered, too many possible retaliations clogging up his throat and only hoarse and airy croaks coming out of his mouth.

"Why aren't I asleep? _Me? _Why aren't _you_? It's really late." He walked over to the screen, just as Kurt clicked a button with utmost precision. "What are you doing, anyways, at this unholy hour?"

**YOUR MESSAGE HAS BEEN SENT**

Kurt turned to him with a smile.

"Spamming. Go to sleep, I zhink I'll be up for a vhile." The statement was undermined when his words went slurred and airy in a contradictory yawn.

"What? No. Come on, go to sleep."

"Nein, I'm not tired." He lied. Evan scoffed.

"Yeah, I can see that. Why aren't you going to sleep?" Kurt's eyes glazed over, and he turned off the computer.

"I turn sechzehn—um, sixteen tomorrow, and I'm too excited."

"... Don't want to fall asleep?" he asked, testing dangerous waters. Kurt could see him and he couldn't see Kurt and that made it somehow easier to ask.

"Ov course not. Vhat are you talking about?" His voice flustered, horrible at lying.

"So let's go then." Evan called his bluff. The eyes, the only thing he could see in the dark, seemed to flash with something akin to fear, and then hardened.

"Fine." And they both went up to sleep.

*************************************************************************************

Henry McCoy rushed in with thundering footsteps, a sheet of paper clutched in his hand tightly and crumpled.

"The results!" he called and rushed into the room and six eyes turned to him with expectation. "We **have** to help Scott."

"Logan," Ororo commanded, "go wake Bobby, Kitty, and Rogue. I'll get Kurt, Evan and Jean."

"No!" he cried, and she turned to him with confusion in her eyes. "I mean... let's switch. I'll get the elf... and Jean."

"Why?" the professor asked. "Is something wrong with one of them? Kurt?" Logan paused and instinctively pulled up his mental shields. He'd made a promise earlier to him...

"No. Nothing's wrong, let's go." He ran to the door, and then turned back.

"By the way, Hank. Who's print was it?"

"There were two." He said, and showed the piece of paper. "Pietro... and Mystique."


	11. Chapter 11: Meetings, good and bad

**A/N: Hey, I'm BACK! Blech, school made me take forever and as it can plainly be seen, it is not the 18****th****... at all. but Nightcrawler's Shadow is the awesomest beta ever who got my phrases to me in record time, so here we are, a brand new chapter with once again, real german. That thing I said about this being finished before Halloween can be. I apologize in advance for my terribly terrible fight scene, but I have a fever and still really wanted to post already. Lastly, I decided to try to butcher Logan's perspective so, he is **_**really**_** OOC. (Along with Mystique, she's kind of my own version of Mystique) It's kind of embarrassing how much I failed at him. Anyways, on with the story.**

**_____________________________________________________________________________________**

******************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

**LOGAN**

*****************************************************************************************

How did this happen? I really can't figure it out. I'm running around the halls right now, at 5am, thinking about it. Somehow, a few years after meeting Charles, fewer years after finally coming to this mansion and just about three after agreeing to teach here, I've become the elf's secret-keeper. Yep, that's right. I'm the only one, probably besides the kid's mother, that now knows about one of the really screwed up parts of his childhood. And I shouldn't even _be_ the elf's secret-keeper, I should have made him talk to 'Ro about his feelings or some crap like that and gotten him into some therapy group for mutant kids or something.

Right?

So why didn't I? Well, I somehow made the stupid mistake of promising. And then I had to listen to an emotional teenage elf's really fucked up nightmares while he glared at me like I was bathing him in acid. I didn't want to listen, he didn't want to talk, so why did I ask him to?

Because we're all a little fucked up, and 'Ro says that talking about it helps. I don't see how, but she's usually right about these type of things. Maybe it's a woman thing, I don't know. But I _bet_ 'Ro would say that we've got some kind of bond now, and that I should talk to him more. Yay. So, anyways, I'm running through the halls, because I have the great job of waking up a kid that can spear me through with bone, a class five telepath that could probably throw me across the room with her mind, and an elf.

That bites.

Fan-freaking-tastic.

I woke up Jean already, and she actually _did_ throw me across the room. I was fine, though, the door stopped me.

The door was not fine.

Luckily, Evan doesn't shoot spikes in his sleep. Which meant I didn't have to threaten him with a claw to the throat. Good, two-thirds done already. Now to get bitten by the elf. He was quiet right now, but it was pretty clear there was something wrong. He messed up that fur of his something awful and I got to see that there were more scars where he kept grabbing. So, not really wanting to get bitten, I pulled the sheets down again and he woke up almost immediately. It was kind of weird, kind of freaky, the way the kid looked at me for a moment, like I wasn't supposed to have seen him; like he wasn't supposed to _be_ seen.

Sigh.

We're going to have to _talk_ again later.

*************************************************************************************

**END LOGAN**

*************************************************************************************

"Elf, wake up." Logan's voice jolted into his ears, and Kurt spied him, recognized him and then relaxed. "Bad dream?" he asked, in code but not really code and he doesn't really know why he asked it when he knew the elf would only feel worse.

"Ja." He whispered back in reply, face burning purple and hot tears slowing but not quite abating yet. He looked up then, with harsh eyes. "Vy did you vake me, Herr Logan?"

"We got a mission." Kurt cocked his head to the side and blinked before standing up suddenly and throwing his sheets back onto the bed. Logan continued. "The message Scott left was forged. We gotta go and rescue him. Get dressed and meet us at the blackbird."

"Zhe blackbird?" he asked, logic seeming to form in his sleep-muddled head. "But vhy do ve need it? Aren't ve just going to zhe brotherhood house?" Logan shook his head.

"Nah, Charles got a lock on one of them. They're moving in a truck somewhere on Highway 4. We gotta fly there, follow them, kick some ass, get Scott back, and do it before being seen. It's also Kitty's first mission, so we gotta make sure she doesn't... ya know... die. You _might_ need one of those swords, so I'd recommend bringing one. Got it?" Kurt nodded carefully and eyed both his closet and the three swords that hung above his bed. Logan began to walk out of the room and stopped, mid-corridor.

"And elf?" Kurt's head snapped up.

"Ja, Herr Logan?"

"Happy birthday."

*************************************************************************************

"Seven, six, five.—" BAMF. Storm sighed, stopping her mental countdown.

"Well, Kurt, you made it just in time. But next time, let us try to be a little swifter in getting ready, hmm?"

Kurt hung his head as an answer and leaped inside the thick black ship, disappearing in the dim light of the mechanized monster. The rest of the team was all inside shortly and then the giant ship took flight into the air. Kitty sat in her own chair, perked upright and clinging to the rests in overenthusiastic glee and Kurt commandeered the seat next to her, as she kept turning to him and commenting on the simplicities of the mission. 'Yes, Kätzchen.' He would say, humouring her. 'It _is_ high up.' 'Mm-hmm, I see the cars.' 'Nein, I felt like that on my first mission too.' 'Scott's _fine._'

Ororo and Wolverine, however, sat near the front of the ship as Jean piloted it, relatively close to the ground.

"Is that their truck?" Ororo kept asking, and Logan patiently looked over each time before patiently replying no, and then stopped looking over at all. "Is that it?" she asked now, and Logan scanned over his side of the jet.

"Is it brown, 'Ro?"

"...No, but—"

"If it's not brown, then no."

"How about that one?"

"What colour is it, 'Ro?"

"Brown." A sigh.

"What make?"

"Some kind of van...jeep... interestingly eno—"

"Not really a _truck _then, is it?"

"No, I suppose not."

"Well, keep lookin', 'Ro." He stated, rising from his chair and eyeing the back of the jet, where Jean was nibbling at her nails and staring through shut eyes at something none of them could see, Evan had taken Kurt's place next to Kitty and toe two of them were gazing out the window and fidgeting in their seats like gleeful children, and Kurt and Rogue sat in opposite corners, keeping to themselves and thinking deep.

"I'm gonna check on the kids." He eased his way to the back of the jet and sat himself next to Kurt, who gave no indication he'd noticed the other man's arrival.

"Elf."

"Ja?" He didn't turn around, just continued staring out the window as the sky sailed by.

"...Elf." Logan prompted and this time Kurt's head turned slowly towards him and gold eves gave him a vacant appraisal.

"Ja, Herr Logan? Are ve zhere?"

"Um," he angled himself further into the seat. "No, we're still looking out for the damn truck." A nod of acknowledgement. A pause. A sigh breaking the silence. "So..." Logan drummed his fingers. "wanna tell me what _this_ dream was about?"

Kurt sighed and then turned back to Logan with too-honest eyes.

"No." ... "not really." The too-honest eyes turned back towards the glass, and Logan twitched a muscle in his jaw. _Ok..._

"Aw, come on, elf." He grunted out and Kurt replied with cold tones and hot glares.

"Vy do you want me to?" Logan's brows arched up. _That's...a good question._ He thought, and shifted in the seat again. _I... don't._

"Because. If ya don't..." he recalled a similar conversation Ororo'd had with him months ago of an entirely different matter and tried to bring her own words into his mouth. "...then you'll explode."

Kurt's mystified expression morphed into one of suspect confusion that was almost funny before he blinked once, hard.

_Crap. Not going well..._

"So?" he pressed, looking around so no one else was listening. Ororo was staring intently down at the highway and the jet had slowed down substantially and stopped to hover occasionally so she could get a better look. Kurt looked down. "Come on, elf."

...

"_O...kay._" He whispered and Logan turned sharply before giving the ship a last quick once-over and settling in for a story. Kurt looked at him directly for a moment, with a movie playing out in the screen of his eyes, and then looked down and began to narrate. "If you really vant to know."

"It vas my... ninth birthday." He gave a short glance up. "Seven years ago." Logan gave a slow nod. Kurt continued.

*************************************************************************************

_The fourth graders clamoured jovially in Heidi Kriemhilde's teaching quarters and the conversations ricocheted off walls and bookcases, blending one into another in the chaos of the morning. All fell silent when the teacher herself strolled in through the door and closed it with an audible click, the lone sound replacing a flurry of noise. Her eyes scanned over all the students', lingering on the faces of each one for just a moment, matching name to face._

"_Klasse," __she announced with a soft voice carrying easily over silence. Class.__ "wir haben heute Geburtstag." __Today, we have a birthday. As expected, the room of children burst into cheer and their young minds all selfishly were wondering what treats they themselves would get from this. _

"_Kurti Wagner ist neun Jahre alt." __Kurti Wagner is nine today. she said, abruptly ending a few of the cheers. Few glares and vastly fewer smiles were sent in Kurti's direction and the boy shrunk deeper into his corner as a girl, Andrea Vogler, clutched his hand obligatorily under the table. _

"_[Nun, klasse.]"__ she chided. __"[Lasst uns singen.]"__Let us sing. Many hesitantly opened their mouths to let free off-key melodies, while the others waited for the reactions of the crowd. __"[Kommen Sie!]"__Come on! she prompted, and there was a round of 'Zum Geburtstag viel Glück' sang by the children, punctuated by one supportive, clearer, more enthusiastic voice that sang out nice and loud, with the possessor flashing joyful glances to the subject of the song all throughout._

_They were returned in a friends' exchange and when the song was over, thirty-three pairs of eyes looked expectantly over to Frau Kriemhilde and asked silently: __what next?_

"_**So**__ ist heute zu Ehren von Kurt Wagner, wir gehen auf die Eisdiele."____**So,**__ today, in honour of Kurti, we will be going to the ice cream shop.__Cheers started anew, from thirty-two excited children, but Kurti himself stayed quiet, building a sense of apprehension, and a feeling of dread._

"Why didn't ya wanna go?" Logan asked in interruption. Kurt gave him a look in response that made him cringe near-visibly and back down away from the smouldering gaze. "Right. Sorry." He mumbled, under his breath. "Keep goin'."

"_Gehen Sie auf die Kinder_._"__Go on, children, She commanded, __"Holen Sie sich Ihre Mäntel." __Get your coats. and took her own advice. Nickolaus pulled Kurti with him towards the rack, but he waved him off with a gesture of a single finger in the air: __**one moment.**_

_He made his way towards the woman, and the tail coiled around his leg in a vague gesture of self-comfort. _

"_Frau?" __he called, straining to meet her eyes with the vast height difference between them. She looked down and shrugged her coat over one slight shoulder._

"_Ja, Kurti?" __The birthday boy licked his lips._

"_Sind Sie sicher, dass es eine gute Idee, für mich zu... gehen irgendwo mit, um ... Sie wissen ..." __Are you sure it's a good idea for me to... He licked his lips. Go out somewhere with um... you know... He gestured up and down his body, emphasizing that which needed no emphasis. She caught on quickly enough and began with a gentle smile._

"She convinced me zhat it vould be fine." Kurt explained as his eyes darted out to the glass, looking through it into time. "She said zhat all ov zhe children get somezhing on zheir birthdays." His mouth twitched up for the briefest second in a private reminiscence of some unsightly joke. "And I **did** like ice cream... So I vent."

"_Kurti, beeile dich!" __Nickolaus shouted as he waded closer to the back of the line, towards his companion in the black cloak that strayed ever so slightly from the group. Come on! Kurti stared back towards the school, which became smaller and smaller in the distance as they walked away from it into unfamiliar territory, for reasons that were becoming less and less apparent in direct correlation with the size of the diminishing building._

"_Kommen!"__ Coming! he shouted to reassure and ran up to the other boy. Andrea, having found company that wanted to talk to her for once in spite of the plump figure and braces that adorned her teeth, was far gone, revelling in her newfound popularity. Kurti paid her no mind._

_By the time the door was opened and the little bell rang from above, Kurti was shaking underneath his folds of cloth and Nickolaus was not oblivious. _

"_Was Geschmack werden Sie erhalten_?_" __What flavour are you going to get? He asked as Kurti rapidly turned his head from side to side, not oblivious himself of the fullness of the shop. He turned to Nickolaus at the sound of his voice, dazed for a minute, and then quickly glanced over at the array of flavoured treats._

"_Chocolate." __he answered._

"_Ja, auch mich."__ Me too. Nickolaus pushed him forwards and the boy stumbled. __"[Go on, order.]" __Kurti muttered out an order for two chocolates when he made it to the counter and took them quickly before he brought them back to his table just as swiftly, Nickolaus in tow. One of the men in the shop stood to get a spoon for his girlfriend, and Kurti tensed in his chair._

"_Was ist los, Kurti?" __he asked as he lifted a scoop of the cold brown to his lips, perceptive. What's wrong?_

"_Nichts." __Kurti answered slowly and too quietly. Nothing. __"Ich bin nur nicht bei etwa so vielen Menschen genutzt werden."__I'm just not used to being around so many people. He looked to the left. And then the right. Nickolaus nodded, not really understanding but because he thought it was what Kurti wanted at the moment. He pointed to Kurti's cup of the cold dish with his head and the boy finally lifted a spoonful to his mouth, putting his other hand at his side._

_And then it all went wrong._

*************************************************************************************

"Someone opened zhe door." He stated, and closed his eyes halfway. "And zhe vind blew inside... my hood blew off." He turned to Logan then and his tail wrapped around himself like a protector. "I vent up to zhe ceiling when they all noticed." He continued in a voice that was too calm and too bored.

"Zhey got me down. I remember zhinkning..." he started, and his eyes fogged over in actual remembrance. "remember zhinking, afterwards, vhy it vas zhat all zhe men-" he scoffed and motioned like he was to rub a hand down his face, but refrained. "zhat all zhe men took knives vith zhem to an **ice cream** shop." He shook his head and Logan thought he'd finished, but the boy surprised them both by continuing. "Zhat vas all I dreamed before you voke me up. But it vasn't even the main part ov the nightmare, Herr Logan." He met his eyes for a moment and the two met, brown and sharp with gold and flat.

_Kurti got off of the floor, scrambling along on bloodied feet and leapt over the man who'd guarded the door, but he'd raised his knife in time, causing Kurti to rip open a lengthy gash from shoulder blade to waistline in the process but not stopping because of adrenaline and noise and static in his ears and because he knew that losing blood was better than not having any left to lose._

_He left occasional dribbles of the stuff from where the knives had hit and knocked him from the ceiling and thanked Frau Kriemhilde in his mind for distracting one of the brutes while he found the strength to kick out of the mob of others and leap out the door and into the forest towards home. He ran and ran, galloping over fallen leaves and then heard angry clamour behind him which made him run faster and faster and breathe heavier and then he turned back and ran straight into the rough, malicious grip of one of the hunters._

"_Bitte," he __croaked immediately as the man twisted his arm behind his back.__ "Ich bin nur ein junge," __I'm just a boy.__ "Nur ein Junge. Nicht- __**accchhh! **__"__The man pulled tighter and slammed his tail down onto the cold ground._

"_Ein Junge?" __he taunted. __"Haben Sie das wirklich?" __Do you really think that? The man asked, before calling over the others from the distance. Kurti felt hot angered breath against his back__._

"_Ja." __He answered, terrified and pleading and scrambled for a stance, a grip on the ground._

"_Sagen Sie mir das, dämon." __the man went on. Tell me this, demon. Kurti opened his mouth to correct him and tasted only salty sweat, fear-shed fur, and running tears. __"Führen Sie einen der anderen Junges angegriffen?" __Do any of the other boys get attacked? The man's voice was taunting yet logical, and Kurti found himself lacking a reply._

"_Sind Sie __**blau**__?" __He mocked. Are any of them blue?__ "Kann jeder von ihnen kleben an Wänden und auf vier Pfoten laufen?" __Can any of them stick to walls and run on four paws? __**Nein...**__Kurti thought reluctantly, but remained silent, struggling still, but finding himself listening. __"Kann jeder der Mädchen?" __Can any of the girls?_

_One of the man's hands went down to his tail and stabbed something into it and Kurti shrieked. The man wrapped an arm around his throat and Kurti clawed at it as it pressed on sensitive fixtures, fragile tubes and bone. He held up the bleeding tail as it lashed in his hand and he gripped it tightly, showing it to Kurti as evidence._

"_Kennen Sie jemand mit einem __**Schwanz**__?" __Do you know anyone else with a __**tail**__? The man snickered and tightened his grip still. Kurti ached for breath and clawed the flesh of the hand unsuccessfully, growing panicky and fearful. He needed air...The man leaned in and whispered:_

"_Neben der Teufel, natürlich" __Besides the devil, of course. And his arm went in for a final squeeze that pushed Kurti's brain up to the roof of his skull and his eyes out of his head. The sounds that resonated in his ears dug into him like a saw against his spine and he __**needed**__ air. He needed to clean off the blood that coated him most everywhere from the knives that cut and stabbed and slashed, and he needed to get away from the ones who wielded them that called out words that weren't right, weren't him because he was just a boy, except for the tail and what this man said as he pushed down on his throat..._

_The pressure built and there was too much and too much pain and Kurti, just turned nine years of age, panicked and broke his non-violent streak, stabbed in his fanged teeth through the skin of the man's arm and bit down. __**Hard.**__ He felt the man tense and then relax from sudden pain and then the feeling of unfamiliar, warm, copper taste washed over his tongue, flowed down his throat, filled his mouth and he could smell it everywhere as it dribbled down his teeth and chin, the blood of his assailant, disgusting and warm with hate and pain._

_And then he was running again, spitting it frantically out, out of his mouth as his vision swam and he screamed for breath. __**What have I just done? **__ Paraded through his mind with every well-deserved breath. They were too far behind, thank _Gott_, and he ran on sliced ankles that screamed with every step and blood that stained his tongue, his soul._

"_Haben alle Jungen trinken Blut, dann, Dämon?" __The man shouted after him as Kurti disappeared into the forest, echoing with a sneering laugh. Do all boys drink blood then, demon?__ "Oder ist das nur Sie?" __Or is that just you?_

_Kurti stopped right in front of his house, delirious with fear and not quite understanding what he'd just done, he broke into loud wracking sobs and choked on tears for breath before he spit the warm liquid copper out of his mouth and then retched when the taste wouldn't leave, eyes dripping tears and body dripping blood. He couldn't run any more, he__** couldn't**__, and the question echoed on his mind as he scrambled inside on shaking feet, and what made Kurti stay there on the floor, in tears and blood, was that he didn't have an answer._

*************************************************************************************

Logan readied to speak and to reply somehow. Do it like 'Ro could and make the boy revert back to normality with a single phrase and gesture, but before he could somehow answer to Kurt's gaze, the gaze which he now identified as **naked**, so terribly bare that it stung to see, he heard Ororo's voice drift in musically through the large jet with the few words that almost ensured he'd never get to _make_ that reply.

"I see the truck."

*************************************************************************************

Scott's eyes were falling shut and all he could register in his drug-addled mind was that there was white. White all around, so bright, and so _pure_. This was wrong... he couldn't _see_ white. He could only see lighter red where white was supposed to be. Something dawned on him. His glasses.

Where were his glasses? He shut his eyes, tightly as he could manage, and pressed deeper against whatever he was leaning on. Without the glasses over his eyes, the quartz that coloured everything a safe red, he'd shoot out beams, and things would get destroyed and people would get hurt...

Wait.

Why was nothing red? He'd seen white, not red-white, and nothing had been destroyed. He hadn't felt anything shooting out of his eyes and he hadn't felt a wave of energy surging out from his head. He'd just... seen. Slowly, Scott opened his eyes again and found that he was tired and _constricted_, found that it was nearly impossible to move and that he didn't want to. It was easier just sitting here. He felt motion underneath him and vibrations against his legs and hands.

Was he moving? It felt somewhat like a car but there was too much room for that and he tried to get his thoughts together enough to figure out what was there around him. He saw the white again but a closer look revealed it was a wall and floor and a motion of his hands revealed they were bound behind his back. This alarmed him some, but the drug brought on a somewhat relaxing sense of neutrality as it lulled him back to sleep.

He scanned around the white areas with his eyes, not really caring how he was able to do that, and his gaze landed on a blue figure sitting across from him, reading a book with a cover that looked boring, even in drugged vision and slurred colours. Who was that there? _Kurt?_ He thought for a moment, before reminding himself his hands were bound and he was in a moving vehicle.

Mystique? _Probably Mystique. _He thought. But why was he able to see everything without the aid of quartz? He closed his eyes again then, and fell back into a drug-addled sleep, deciding quite contentedly that it didn't matter.

*************************************************************************************

The woman was finally here. She'd seen a road sign some three hours ago that she'd remembered hearing and that she'd recognized and now she was _here _and she needed only turn the corner to arrive. With returned zest and the full brunt of her long journey finally getting to her along with the foul taste in her mouth and the unpleasantness of clothes unchanged, she grasped the wheel and turned off into the corner she needed. Then she looked up, up, and gave a small rewarded gasp as the mansion she was searching for made itself apparent.

It was larger than she'd expected but that didn't matter. All that mattered was that she'd arrived and there was that parking space looking inviting and just the right size for her car, like it'd been tailored like a glove. And she fit perfectly as she made her way inside. When she turned the key, the sound of the engine dying was the most liberating thing she'd heard in a long while.

She got out of the car and stretched as far as she could, relishing in the sound of cracking joints and arching her back. She hauled her luggage out and wheeled it all over to the front door of the mansion and then rapped on the door.

*************************************************************************************

The blackbird jet was following the truck now at a slow speed, cloaked in an invisibility function that felt strange to the students and teachers alike, when they looked out of the windows to not see sleek black metal or a protruding wing. They were all gathered near one of the doors, and Jean had her eyes closed tight while the others waited patiently and not-so patiently for her to open them. After a while, bright green eyes shot open and a report was given in clipped tongue as she massaged her head.

"Ok, there's Scott and one other person down there. Scott's asleep, though... and I can't tell who the other person is. It's probably one of the brotherhood."

"_Really?_" Kitty sarcasmed, and Jean gave her a look before continuing.

"There's three of them in the front."

"And you can't tell who?" Logan asked, irritated. She shook her head and looked down.

"No, I, um... I've been practising my teke mainly. Haven't really gotten around to telepathy..." There was a series of mutual sighs before Logan regrouped.

"Okay. Here's the plan. You." He said, pointing to Kitty. "You do nothing except maybe help out one of us if we ask. Go with elf."

"What? Why, can't I, like, do anything?" she asked.

"Because it is your first mission, Kitty." Storm replied. "It's better if you just..." she searched for the word. "_observe._"

"You." Wolverine directed, pointing to Jean, who was looking abashedly down at the floor. "You stay here in case they blow out the engines or something. You good enough yet to hold up the blackbird?" She nodded.

"Good. Um... someone good go with elf and Kitty." He looked around. "Rogue, come with me and 'Ro; we're going to the drivers."

"That leaves me." Said Evan. "Am I 'good'?"

"Yeah, you'll work. OK, here's the plan. People going with me, disarm the ones in the front, and then we'll drive the car and park it somewhere. They'll... wake up eventually."

"Can't we just, like, take them to the police?" Kitty asked. She was pointedly ignored.

"All right, so, elf, you 'port in with Kitty and Spyke, get Scott out, knock out whoever's in there. Preferably _before_ you get Scott out." Kurt mock-saluted and grasped Kitty and Spyke by the shoulders before closing his eyes and disappearing in a puff of smoke.

Kurt reappeared and leaned on the shoulders for support momentarily, shaking off the strain of two passengers. Neither of them noticed. Mystique jumped a little, and cursed quietly as she stood, readying to defend herself and maintain her prisoner. She met Kurt's eyes and gold clashed with gold before both sighed and Kurt's stance slackened the slightest bit. Kitty watched in fascinated horror as Kurt's eyes burned into Mystique's and then he sighed before the battle.

"Hello, mutter."

*************************************************************************************

The professor coasted his way down the wheelchair ramp Bobby had made for him, and wondered briefly where everyone else was as he made his way towards the door. He wheeled himself at it and then unlocked the several locks with a click of security as the person on the other side ceased their knocking. The door creaked open and Xavier found himself looking upwards at a rather short, blonde, clearly exhausted young woman. She crouched down and looked into his eyes, and they both broke out into a unanimous smile before taking each other into an embrace.

"You remember me, then?" he asked, releasing her. Her eyes had black underneath them.

"Of course, professor!" she said, dropping her arms down at her sides. She brushed some unkempt hair from her face and blinked, flushed. Her accent was surprisingly unnoticeable. "How are you?"

"I am good," he said, looking behind her to see a series of bag after bag of luggage. "and you?"

"Tired." She smiled meekly. After peering inside, she raised her brows. "Is Kurt here? Did I miss his birthday?"

"Oh..." the professor's face fell the slightest bit. "No, you are here on the right day. But... Kurt is out on a mission." _Along with half the mansion..._ he thought. "Come in, though, come in! You must be exhausted. How long have you been traveling?"

"Oh, some of last night but I fell asleep so I could do it during the day. Night traveling is impossible for me." She joked. "I'm more of a day tripper."

"Yes, me as well. One moment, I'll call someone to help you with your bags."

**Bobby.** He summoned the boy, and the woman watched with mild surprise as he coasted down on a stream of ice as naturally as breathing.

"Hey." He waved to her.

"Hello."

"Bobby, please help this young woman with her bags."

"Can do, prof." He saluted, and gave her a flashy militant grin before transforming instantly into translucent ice that wafted frost-fumes and carrying the luggage all away into one of the mansion's spare rooms.

She walked inside and nearly fell unconscious then and there when the warmth of the house took her over.

"Would you like something?" he offered. "To maybe eat or drink?"

"No, thank you. Do you know, maybe, _when_ Kurt will be back?"

"I'm afraid I don't. You're welcome to anything here, though, during your stay, but he may well take most of the day."

"Oh..." she frowned. "Then if it's alright to you, professor, I think I will just..." she yawned. "Go to sleep."

*************************************************************************************

"Hello, _Kurt._" _Verdammt!_ He thought. _Did it __**have**__ to be Mystique?_ Evan decided, in a fit of sheer adrenaline to lunge at her as means of distraction, evidently the stupidest possible thing to do in this situation. To no one's surprise, he was out cold in a matter of seconds. Kitty went to move forwards towards Scott but Kurt made a gesture of warning that stopped her. _Not yet. _

"Come for your friend, I assume?" She gestured with eyes not turned away from the two at Scott, who had jolted awake at the sound of Evan falling, quite unceremoniously, to the floor. He was now looking around the inside of the truck with glazed eyes, a trail of spittle threatening to spill down from his lips.

"...Ja. Ve're here for Scott. ...So let him go, M-" he caught himself. "_Mozher._" Kitty caught it this time and went from 'mere observer' to the opposite of helpful in a haze of gawking. Neither of them noticed.

"I apologize, Nightcrawler. But I cannot do that. You can leave now, or—"

"Whoa," interrupted Kitty. "Scott's eyes are, like, open."

"Ja, and?" Kurt asked, harsher than he meant to.

"And we're still, like, standing here." Was the blunt reply. Slowly, Kurt understood what she meant. His eyes turned over to the boy in the corner who sat with bound hands and feet and whose eyes were as warned, open in a stupor's squint.

"...Zhat is true." He countered, noticing his addled state and then turned to Mystique. "Vy is zhat?" She smiled then a chilling, bittersweet smile tainted with time.

"It is something we have procured recently. It was hard to find, but worth it. A mutant suppressant, if you will. It suppresses powers and comes with a few... _side effects_." Scott's head tilted to his side with a flutter of hair to emphasize the point.

Kurt looked over at him, met Mystique's eyes, and then thought for a moment, still in fighting stance. He made a calculated decision and then signalled with his tail, hoping Kitty made up for her lack of focus with a somewhat observant quality. In the blink of an eye, he 'ported over to Scott's side and grabbed his shoulder, ready to bring him closer to Spyke and Kitty, and take the booth away. He was quick in his movements.

Mystique was quicker. She kicked his hand away from the boy and he dodged his way from another blow, clinging to the wall, eyes blazing and tail lashing. He was _not_ in the mood for this. Kitty carefully phased her way over to Evan and dragged him towards Scott. All three of them huddled in a pile, each one equally helpful in Kurt's eyes.

"Stay phazed, Keety!" he called, accent growing thicker. She complied as Kurt crawled his way over to the ceiling and jumped down, only to disappear and then reappear a few feet to Mystique's left and tackle her to the ground. He pulled her down and pinned her arms down.

"Just let us take Scott, and ve'll leave!" he said as she kicked him to the stomach. He grunted and she reversed the position, digging his tail into the floor.

"I would prefer it if you simply left." She hissed and dug her knees into his hips. "Go on, let us take what we need from your friend, and you and the rest of your little fifteen year old 'X-men' can go and do whatever it is you do in peace until we come back for you. Much easier for the both of us, wouldn't you agree?" She pulled a dagger out from a sheath near her waist, and readied it for a threat. Kitty's jaw went loose.

"Actually," he said as he wrapped his tail around her and threw her off. He stood firmly on the ground and drew his own sword, anger seeping through, ecstatic for a convenient outlet. "I turned sixteen today." Their swords clashed and their eyes met then as Kurt hissed out:"Happy birzhday to me, eh, _mom_?"

*************************************************************************************

The sword fighting was a sight to behold, Kitty thought. Since she was not strong enough to carry either boy along with her out of the truck, she was still sitting there with the both of them, watching Kurt duel Mystique, the woman who was his mother and listen to the clanking of metal on metal. Sparks flew and the truck moved and rocked but neither blue person lost their footing as they battled each other out and came dangerously close to the three intangible people in the corner at times.

"Not quite how you imagined your sweet sixteen, is it?" she crooned as she blocked his flèche with a move of her own. "Fighting your _mother_ inside of a truck in America?"

"No." He said and feinted, throwing her off guard a bit when he managed to nick her shoulder. "Not _qvite_."

"Fighting for someone you've known barely a year and a half, I might add. Tell me, do you consider these people your _friends_?" She advanced.

"Ja, I do." He replied, matching her easily.

"And why is that? Because you believe they'd do the same for you if it was you there, drugged out of your mind on the bottom of a truck?" _Cling, clang, cling... _"Because they love you?" She landed a nick to his stomach and he hissed. "No one could love you."

"No, _Mozher_," he answered, shaking his head, venom in his voice. "Zhat is vhere you're wrong." He crossed his sword with hers and bared fangs. "Because you veren't able to ever _understand_ family ees no reazon vhy—"

"Family!" she cackled, ignoring the several shallow nicks at her flesh she had received in comparison to his one. "Family, these people who know nothing about you? Who sent you in here not knowing who you were to face?" He was thrown against a wall and grunted out with pain. She advanced and he got a few feet away from it before starting up with her again.

"Or are you talking about that gypsy woman, the one that nursed your burns that time when you were to weak to fight back?" her voice was an imitation of baby-talk, twisted with spite. He paused. The truck rocked.

"How did you—"

"Oh, yes, I know _all_ about that, _son._" She pushed him closer to the wall as the noise of blade on blade grew in frequency. "About the way she kept you as a pet, had you perform. Family, hah!" He was almost back against it now and she moved slyly, like a serpent.

"You were nothing more to her than a toy, as you are to these people. _Elf,_ I believe. Certainly more charming then demon, I suppose. But certainly not what one would call a son, or brother. They don't care about you."

He was against it now and his teeth grated against each other as she continued her tirade.

"The most family you ever had was me." She pushed his blade with hers closer and closer to his throat until he strained against it.

"The most someone ever cared for you was when I took the time to wrap you in a blanket before I threw you off that cliff!"

And then the truck took a bump and stopped abruptly, presumably crashing into something like a ditch, with that jab to the heart and his tail found her legs, pulled her down in the instability of the motion, and then held both sword and dagger to her throat. He flashed one last glance in her direction before filling her lungs with sulphur, grasping on to all three people (despite the fact that kitty could well have followed) and jaunting them all up, up, into the jet.

He landed in a haze of people and breathed heavily before releasing Kitty from his grip and meeting the startled eyes of those around him.

"Go!" he called and go they did, leaving the fallen vehicle behind them, along with the heart-baring truths that lay within, dissipating with the smoke into the summer air.

*************************************************************************************

"Ah, you've arrived." Called out the professor as Scott was quickly adorned with goggles and carried off to bed along with Evan, who appeared in a similar position. "Wonderful, I see it went well. Kurt," he addressed, and Kurt looked towards him, evidently not in the mood for people.

"Someone's come to meet you. For your birthday, I believe, she came. I think it will be a pleasant surprise but, ah!" he lit up. "It appears she's awake." Kurt raised a brow and turned his gaze towards another room, where the blonde woman came out, a grin splitting her face.

Everything was forgotten for the moment, as Kurt's eyes lit up for the first time in too long, and he rushed towards her, picking her up and swinging her around in an embrace while muttering loving, hurried German through a grin. She was laughing too, and embracing him back as his teammates watched in bemused interest. When it appeared Kurt was done, he set her down.

"Hi, Kurti." She whispered and embraced him once more, pressing her head into his chest. He looked towards the friends in a rapid mood change, and announced.

"_Meinen Freunden,_ allow me to introduce you all..."


	12. Chapter 12: Family and friends

**A/N: Dorkonx really said it all in the first few words of his last review. But I promise this chapter's written better. It's essentially a short one, and a break from all the intenseness. Next chapter's gonna be **_**really**_** fun to write though, with lots of intenseness because I've been planning it since I went to Israel two months ago and I'm **_**really**_** excited to finally write it down. Also, should be posting my entry for the Nightscrawlers challenge... now-ish. And for this chapter, I find the idea of one member of the family having a way stronger accent than the others for no reason amusing:) **

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"...To my greatest friend who came, _Mein Gott_, who came all zhe vay from _Germany_ to visit me." He placed a hand to his chest theatrically before throwing it around her waist and proffering her to them like a showman's display. Her blonde hair faintly glowed with the mimicry of golden cotton. "Jimaine," he said. "meet zhe X-men."

And that she did. The girl freed herself of Kurt's warm arms and ambled forwards until she was standing close to the line of tired children and adults and then carefully offered a pale hand to the first one; a red-haired woman. She had only the ghost of an accent in her soft speech; surprising as she'd lived in Germany as long as Kurt himself. Jean supposed some people were just good at foreign dialect.

"Hello, I'm Jimaine." Jean grasped her hand. Calloused. Not everything about the girl was soft, it seemed.

"Jean."

"Good to meet you."

She slid her hand out of Jean's to move down the line of X-men in a similar progression as Kurt explained Jimaine to those she'd passed by.

"Back in _Winzeldorf_, Jimaine vas my best friend." He gestured to nothing in particular. "Ve've been playing togezher since ve vere little children. Her—"

"Babies." Jimaine reprimanded gently as she slid her hand out of the fourth slightly perplexed X-man to move on to the next. "Since we were _babies_, even." She had a smile on her face from endearing reminiscence.

"Right. I've known her _forever_. Her mozher and my mozher vere friends; zhey vorked in zhe circus togezher."

"Ororo Munroe." Said Storm, at the near end of the line.

"A pleasure, fräulein Munroe." One person left. "And you are?"

"Um, Kitty." They shook hands.

"Kitty?" Jimaine asked, vaguely recognizing the word. She looked to Kurt.

"Kätzchen." He translated.

"Ah."

There were greetings and small-talk stories thrown between them all easily as Kurt observed with a few inserted comments here and there, mood rapidly lifted and a vastly changing opinion about his sixteenth birthday beginning to form.

"How did you, like, rent a car?" Kitty asked. All heads turned to her, now curious themselves as to the answer, and Jimaine blushed. She opened her mouth to say something, but Kurt intervened.

"Oh, leave her alone, Kätzchen." He said, once again returning to his position in a quasi-embrace with the girl. "She's tired, I'm sure. And I vant to show her around the mansion."

"Ach, no! First, wait...!" Jimaine said, raising up a finger and then running off as Kurt stood, perplexed and vaguely amused. Both emotions increased as she reappeared, something behind her back. He caught a glimpse of it. It was colourful. Jimaine held it with a Cheshire grin and played with it in her hands. She didn't speak. Kurt sighed, familiar with her antics and then offered the obligatory:

"Vat do you have behind your back, Jimaine?" The grin doubled in size.

"You'll have to guess." He sighed.

"Mein birzhday present?" She nodded vigorously as he proceeded to try to peek over.

"Part one."

"You're not going to tell me vat it is?" Shake of the head. Grin. Most of the other X-men had migrated over to the kitchen or their rooms by now to give them some privacy.

"Sie haben zu erraten."

"English, Jimaine. You might as vell learn some vhile you're here." She rolled her eyes and repeated herself.

"You have to guess."

"Mmmm..." He thought about it. "clozhes?"

She shook her head and gave him a look.

"A book? A movie?"

She shook it again, trying to keep her lips together from bursting open with paroxysms of giddy laughter. He suddenly turned onto a different wave of thoughts and he became a little uneasy.

"Is zhis some kind ov joke gift?" he asked. "Vill it explode vhen I open it?"

"Shut up." She laughed and held it in front of him and he looked it over. The box was long and wrapped in bright green and pink plaid paper and the black ribbon that was glued on looked strange. "Gift." She repeated, stern.

"I really hope zhat vas in English."

"Keep guessing."

"Anozher sword, I don't know, Jimaine!" The grin transferred to her eyes as she gave him the package.

"Close." She said and watched as he ripped it open. His mouth fell open and he picked up the long, brown object carefully in his hands, holding it against the sun as if testing if it was real. Jimaine looked utterly pleased with herself.

"A jindachi-zukuri sheath..." he breathed and turned it around under his gaze. "1941, WWII for... a type 98 katana sword." He looked back at her for a moment and was smiling softly beneath the look of open-mouthed shock.

"I _have_ a type 98 katana." He announced.

"Yes," she said. "I know." He placed the sheath back in the box and slid it away from her before he embraced her and sighed out a deal of tension.

"Danke, Jimaine." He said and then threw his head onto her shoulder. "Gott, I missed you." He muttered. She caught on.

"Bad day, Kurti?" There was a nod against her arm and the vibration of a purr when she stroked his hair. He resurfaced after a moment and quickly bamfed her to his room, where he placed the box gently down and not-so-subtly changed the subject. She didn't mind either.

"Ve have to call Margali, ja? Tell her you're here and... alive." Jimaine pretended to think about it.

"Not yet." She said. "I want to spend some time with you first. I haven't _seen_ you in a year and a half!" She anticipated his question. "One-day long birthday visits don't count." That shut him up and he eventually conceded.

"All right, fine. Let me shower and ve'll go and catch up, ja? Grab somezhing to eat?" Jimaine agreed and followed him out the door. "And Jimaine?"

"Ja?"

"Zhank you for not getting me somezhing embarrassing I'd have to show my friends." She smiled an evil smile.

"Who says I didn't?"

"Was?"

"There's still part _two_." He sighed.

"And zhere's no vay I can get zhis one privately?"

She shook her head.

"Verdammt."

*************************************************************************************

"Guysguysguys!"

"W'a is it, Bobby?"

"Kurt and Jimaine just left." Bobby had interrupted a post-mission relaxation circle in the living room, which was evidently a very bad idea. The X-men, including the newly awoken Scott and Evan, and even Storm, were sprawled in various places throughout the room. He'd leaned over Rogue at the moment, and stared down at her. Her hair was spread around her like in water, and the white curled over her face like horns. Fitting for the look she gave him when her eyes shot open and glared green hellfire.

"So?" she asked. Scott groaned, sat up, and rubbed his head a few meters away from her, tufting his hair up and swearing incoherencies about mutant suppressants and hangovers all the while. Evan was doing roughly the same, but he was holding icepacks to his head like a sandwich.

"_So_? _**So**_? So now we gotta start on the _party_!" Five pairs of eyes turned to him, and Rogue's horns curved and joined at the top; much less intimidating.

"Party?" Evan asked.

"YEAH!" the boy yelled; Scott mumbled out something incoherent and loaded with swears and clutched his head tighter. "The birthday's _today_, we won't celebrate, probably, till tomorrow, and we haven't done the cake!"

At the mention of the cake, Evan and Jean exchanged glances and recalled unpleasant memories of culinary experiences. Their post-mission relaxation had gotten much less relaxing now.

"All right." Said Jean, rational, prepared. "Let's go... make a cake. We'll do decorations and stuff at night when he's asleep."

"To the cake!" announced Evan, and winced at his own loud words. Scott's hands itched towards his glasses. Rogue lay still. The former of the three stood up, helped Kitty up, and then she spoke her first words since she'd come back.

"That blue woman..." she paused. "...Mystique, is like, his _mother_?" Her one comment alone sent the rest of them into stunned silence. _Oh boy... _thought Jean. _This is gonna be __**fun**__._

*************************************************************************************

It was night and raining gently by the time they came back, and Jimaine was full out laughing as she told her story and walked, Kurt by her side.

"Zhat's not funny, Jimaine." He said, fighting a smirk.

"Yes, it is!" she insisted as he turned away, so she could not see him smile. "Ha!" she turned his head towards her. "See? Yes it is!"

"Zhat vas cruel to Stefan." He giggled out, trying to imagine the look on his brother's face when the cow's milk came out chocolate. "How did you learn zhat spell, anyvays?"

"It's probably the only one she ever _let _me do." Jimaine joked, and then answered. "Margali taught it to me so I could play a joke on Stephan." _That_ made Kurt laugh out loud, and the two shared fond memories as they strolled through the forest, a sorceress and a demon that both weren't quite.

"Ach, Margali!" Kurt suddenly exclaimed, and turned roughly around. His mood was mostly lifted by now, and he didn't seem too alarmed at whatever he'd realized.

"What?"

"Ve forgot to call her."

"...Scheiβe. Let's go, then. **Now.**" She hinted, but Kurt shook his head.

"Ve might as vell valk." And so arm in arm, they strolled through the woods and Kurt felt something he'd needed to feel after his encounter with mystique. Alone here, in the woods, with Jimaine on his arm, he felt, for the first time in a bit too long, at home.

*************************************************************************************

"Ok. _WHAT_ did you do to the cake?"

"What?" Jean stared at it.

"It's BARELY cooked, the cookie dough is burnt in some places and... _frozen_ in some. And there's the smell of... what is that, plastic?"

"Sprinkles." Kitty said innocently, holding up a small vial of the coloured stuff. Jean gave her a look and then tried to connect the dots. Rogue was staring at the cake with a sense of vague fear and intense speculation.

"And _why_ did you put the sprinkles on the cake _**before**_we baked it?" Jean asked, not containing her frustration. They'd first had to five Kitty a rather long talk on the fact that yes, Mystique was his mother and no, it was most certainly not a good idea to mention it to him, before she had put on an apron and signed on to the job. Her answer was a simple:

"I thought they would melt." And indeed, about 1% of the sprinkles had melted into a hot, waxy tub of coloured, caramelized sugar. But the rest of them merely were emitting smoke and smelling like burnt plastic. They littered the frighteningly unevenly cooked cake like little coloured corpses, and it fell into an unholy shape beneath them. Thunder struck outside.

"Even I know sprinkles are indestructible." Said Bobby meekly.

"They can't bae kailled." Rogue shook her head with the traces of a smile.

"Hey," said Evan, interrupting the silence. All eyes turned to him. "It`s good." His mouth was full with a glob of the huge, misshapen cake, and he had a look of speculative placidness on his face. He turned to them after he'd swallowed and went to wash the fork. "It's good." He repeated. Kitty was looking eminently pleased with herself.

"Whah is there sugah on it?" Evan smiled sheepishly.

"I thought it would help the burnt parts."

"Grrrr..."

"All right." Shrugged Scott as Jean hefted the cake away to a hiding place, mellowing the moods out. "Let's work on the party."

*************************************************************************************

"Ok, I'm dialing."

Jimaine's fingers pressed down on the buttons, and finally, there was the steady, oscillating ring. Kurt picked up the other phone.

"_Halli-hallo?_"

"Mama!" he shouted out, into the phone.

"_Kurti?_"

"Und Jimaine." Jimaine chirped. Kurt warned Margali to speak in English in between exuberant exclamations, rapid speech, and underlying purrs.

"_How was your trip, liebling?_" Margali asked.

"Oh, it was good, Margali. Long, but good."

"_Did Kurti like the sheath?_" Kurt grinned.

"Ja, mama. I loved zhe sheath." After a pause:

"_How much magic did you use, Jimaine?_"Margali asked, somewhat coyly. Jimaine flushed in front of Kurti's eyes.

"...Only a little. But no one saw me. ...I won't use any more." There was a minute of Margali chiding her and Jimaine making exaggerated eye-rolling gestured in Kurt's direction, and then Margali announced:

"_Let me talk to Kurti_." Jimaine handed over the phone and made her way out of the room with a theatrical wave of her arm to give mother and son their privacy.

"_Kurti, happy birthday, liebchen!_" she crowed.

"Zhank you, mama." He grinned. This was what he was used to his birthdays being. Close friends and small, stay-at-home celebrations.

"_What did you all do to celebrate?_"

"Ve didn't do anyzhing. Ve had a mission. Ve might do somezhing tomorrow, if zhey remember, I don't know. It vas a long day."

"_Did Jimaine tell you about the chocolate cow?_"

"Ja, she did!" Kurt laughed. "Uh-huh. Mm-hmm. Ja, brilliant, mama."

"_How are all your friends?_" she asked.

"Good, actually. Scott vas kidnapped, zhough, but only for a short time. Ve rescued him today, actually."

"_You weren't hurt? Were you?_"

"No, mama, I'm fine."

"_How's that Kätzchen girl?_" Margali asked. "_Better, I hope._"

"Oh, ja, I zhink she's almost completely used to me by now."

"_She didn't give you nightmares, did she?_" Kurt froze with the phone glued to his ear and changed positions on the bedpost.

"A few, actually." He admitted. Then: "How did you know, mama?"

"_Kurti, I'm your mutter. I __**always**__ know._"

"Ja, well..." he was growing uncomfortable discussing it. "Zhey should go avay soon."

"_Which one?_" she asked.

"Ich weiβe nicht, mama, all ov zhem. I'm expecting to finish my ninth birzhday one tonight." He felt Margali's frown from half a world away. "It's fine, mama. It happens. Let me enjoy my birzhday, ja?" he joked. He was glad smiles also traveled overseas.

"_Of course, liebe. Sorry. Would you like to talk to Stefan?_"

"Ja, give him here!" Kurt picked up the phone, and then talked for the remainder of the night, with those who loved him, even from across the globe.

*************************************************************************************

"Ok, where's Kurt?" asked Jean as her eyelids threatened to slip down over her vision.

"On the phone." Answered Scott, essentially in the same condition.

"Still? Whoa. Jimaine?"

"I think she fell asleep."

Jean looked around. "Kitty?"

"On the computer. Said something about deleting all her emails."

"Ok, great. Fine. What time is it?" Scott glanced at his watch and read over the pulsing electronic numbers with a wince.

"12:12."

"Great." She said brightly. "So, there's school tomorrow, our cake is nice and ready, there's school tomorrow... What time did we say we'd wake him up?"

"5:45." He repeated.

"Great." She said again. "Now let's go to sleep and hope he's ready for a nice morning surprise."


	13. Chapter 13: Foreign Customs

**A/N: Yay, chapter 13! Sorry it took so long but mega thanks to Nightcrawler's shadow for the usual: being awesome and putting up with my beta needs : ) And Caprichoso for helping me. A lot. To Spiritgirl: Don't worry, I have an embarrassing present all lined up, but as for the other thing... there's no point explaining it, this is kinda my trial-and-error first fic anyways, so sorry, but I'm gonna leave that be. ****And did anyone catch my hint in chapter 11?**"Oh, some of last night but I fell asleep so I could do it during the day. Night traveling is impossible for me." She joked. "I'm more of a day tripper." **'Day tripper? Daytripper? Amanda Sefton? Jimaine?' =D too subtle? Also, I posted my Nightscrawlers entry **_**(which won =D )**_** So I'm going to shamelessly advertise it here... And this is actually important: It is still November (I got from nightscrawlers, after much searching, that his birthday is November eleventh, after the late Dave Cockrum)**

* * *

Jean's alarm clock's fate was sealed when it decided to go off at 5:00am. She'd smashed it into the wall and then jolted awake from the impact noise and cursed as the scattered remains of it littered the ground near her feet. It didn't matter that she'd set it to go off at that unholy hour, only that it did and she was sleepy. With a groan, she stood up, fixed the hem of her nightdress, and went off to wake Scott. She opened the door gently and stepped inside with a quiet footstep, shifting weight gingerly on the floors.

She stalked over to his bed and nudged him.

"Scott."

"Mmmmnnnnhh." He grumbled and turned away.

"_Scott_. Come on, wake up." He waved an arm in her general direction and tried to bury himself into his pillow. Sighing, she checked her hands for coldness and then pulled open his covers and pressed them to his back. He woke instantly, with a squeal.

"Ugh, Jean..." he mumbled, rubbing a hand down his face. "C'mon, get out." She hefted him to his feet.

"Hah! Funny, you never seemed to mind me sneaking into your bed before." Scott sighed and then peeled open his eyes to look at her, though the gesture was lost.

"Ok, ok, I'm up."

"Good. Now go wake Bobby and Evan. I'll get Kitty, Rogue and Jimaine."

"'Kay." He mumbled. Jean walked out of the room and stalked across the halls to Kitty and Rogue's room and then knocked quietly, four times. She was rewarded after a minute with Kitty's head passing through the door and sleepily asking her what she wanted.

"Come on, get your gift, we're going to decorate and stuff now." Kitty muttered out an "Okay," and disappeared behind the door before reappearing with Rogue and two brightly wrapped parcels, one in each girl's hand.

"_Are those them? Your presents?" Both girls nodded. "Good, go get balloons and all that stuff." Rogue saluted and gave a yawn before Kitty grabbed her hand and the two disappeared through the floor. Jean walked down the rest of the halls and she saw Scott and Bobby meet Evan outside of his room; he'd clearly woken up of his own accord. _

"_We decorating?" he whispered over the silence of the hall, and Jean affirmed. "Cool." The crowd made their way down the stairs of the mansion and Jean separated from the rest of them somewhere at the base of the stairs, parting with a few commands and sleepy exchanges of smiles, before she went over to the new girl's room, to wake her up. She knocked on the door and no one answered, only silence carrying through the white door. On a whim, Jean slowly opened the door and stepped inside, seeing Jimaine sprawled between layers of cloth, nearly hidden save for the mop of blonde hair gleaming amongst the white._

_Jean approached her and saw her sideways-tilted face, surrounded by thick clusters of blanket. Her lips were slightly open and her eyes were moving beneath her lids rapidly in a dream. Jean was tempted for a moment to discover just what the dream might be, but refrained and gently shook her awake by the shoulder._

"Was?_" she asked at first, not opening her eyes. "_Wer bist du?_" and then she rubbed a hand down her face and turned to Jean in the morning darkness. "Oh, Jean. Hello." Jean smiled._

"_It's morning, Jimaine. We were gonna decorate down here and then wake Kurt up with the cake." She rose from her crouch. "You can go back to sleep if you want." She offered. Jimaine sat up in her bed._

"_Nein- no, I will come."_

* * *

"_What colours did you get?" Evan asked as he searched through the bag of streamers for the roll of tape he'd dropped._

"_Blue, green, yellow and red." Kitty answered._

"_Are they really festive colours?"_

"_What colours would _you_ have gotten?" she phased into the bag, phased out, and handed Evan the tape she'd retrieved with a smirk._

"_Guess they're fine. How'd you pick them?"_

_Kitty shrugged. "They're the windows colours."_

"_Nerd."_

"_Shut up and hang that one." Jimaine walked in to see a steady train of streamers hanging down from walls and ceilings at just the right excessiveness that showed domestic early-morning decorating. "Hey, Jimaine." Evan called out, giving her a sidelong glance._

"_Hi, Evan. Kätzchen."_

"_Like, morning, Jimaine." Her eyes darted around the room, which was swathed in decor, and she opened her mouth in a timid yawn in the early morning. _

"_What do you want me to do to help?" Kitty exchanged glances with Jean. _

"_You could, like, help fix the cake up. It's like... not that pretty." Kitty smirked. "And we, like, wanted it to spell out something. Maybe you and Jean could do that."_

"_Oh, no." Said Scott, who was looking dangerously unstable on a growing pillar of ice as he held a colourful banner of reflective sparkling material in his hands that did not quite reach the ceiling. "We need Jean here. She has teke." He said like a proud parent. On cue, Jean sighed and Scott was propelled into the air, a few feet higher than where the ice tower had gotten him. Bobby shrugged and went over to help Evan on the other side of the room._

_Jimaine turned to Kitty, who merely shrugged again, for further instruction. "Fine then, you can like, do the cake with me."_

"_Jawohl." The two girls walked towards the kitchen._

"_Don't let her screw it up!" someone shouted from behind the two._

"_Shut up!" Kitty yelled back, and Jimaine couldn't help but smile at the display. This was a fine house for Kurti, she decided as Kitty fished out the giant pastry from somewhere. A fine place to live in, with fine people. Jimaine pulled her bathrobe, a silver-gray, tighter around herself and rolled up her sleeves. Kitty fetched a series of icing colours, sprinkles, and two slight scalpel-type knives. She handed one to Jimaine, who looked at it quizzically. _

"_I'm guessing we should, like, clear away the burnt parts." She suggested and Jimaine complied, starting on an opposite end of it as she blinked the remnants of sleep away from her eyes. The two worked in companionable silence for a while, before Jimaine started up a conversation of her own._

"_So, Kätzchen, you're fourteen?"_

"_Fifteen." She corrected. "You?"_

"_Sixteen."_

"_Cool."_

"_How long have you been here?"_

"_Not that long actually. School, this is, like, my first year, but I went to a junior high that's like, really close by so I already, like, know most everyone." She answered, politely. Jimaine tore away at a burnt piece of the cake with a wince and grafted another onto it, her motions somewhat practiced. "How about you?" Kitty asked suddenly. "You, like, go to school in Germany?"_

"_Ja." Jimaine answered with a smile. "Same school all my life. It's nice." There was another lull as more ruined bits of cake-flesh were thrown away to the side._

"_So how long have you and Kurt, like, known each other?"_

"_Since we were babies." She restated._

"_Wow, so you weren't, like, exaggerating." Jimaine shook her head. "What's that like? Knowing someone for that long?"_

"_I don't know," said Jimaine. "They're someone that's always there... always was... always will be there. It's a good feeling."_

"_Yeah, I'll bet it is." Kitty sneaked a look to how the boys were doing, decorating along with Rogue. There were two girls lifting boys up into the air now; Rogue and Jean had gotten creative, and the ceilings and walls were covered in light-catching ornaments and banners of HAPPY BIRTHDAY!._

"_Move _around_, guys!" she shouted. "You should get, like, other rooms too. And upstairs!" They obliged with a flurry of shuffles and footfalls heading up the stairs and Kitty and Jimaine continued to pick apart the cake and make idle conversation._

"_Were you in the circus too?" Kitty asked. "Like, I know Kurt was, so like... were you?" Kitty almost winced at that sentence._

"_Ja." Jimaine grinned. "I help Kurti's mother with the magic but tried to do something on the trapeze once. Kurti tried to teach." She stabbed away at a burn. "It was... interesting few weeks."_

"_Like, what's so funny about it?" Kitty said, referring to the grin._

"_He has an interesting way of trying to teach someone. Throws them onto the rungs and then catching them and feeling bad about it when they fall." Kitty chuckled._

"_Yeah, that sounds, like, about right." After a while, "Did you ever know his mother? His like, _real _mother?"_

"Margali_ is his _real_ mother." Jimaine said, all traces of warmth gone from her voice. _All right._ Thought Kitty. _ I can take a hint. Nevermind...

"_Guys, we're totally ready." Kitty announced, and then repeated it, louder in volume. "We're ready!" The remainder of the group was there in a flash, save for Evan._

"_Where's Evan?" asked Jimaine._

"_When we finished decorating, he went to his room. I don't know why, but I think we can go ahead." Said Jean. With those words, the group of teenagers let out a collective yawn, impaled their mediocre-looking cake with mismatched candles, set them on fire, and made their way towards Kurt's room._

* * *

_Evan, due to everyone's overlooking, had not been informed of the wakeup plans, and was merely sleeping soundly in his bed as they crept towards the door. Kurt, however, had earlier been correct about 'finishing' his birthday nightmare from the previous night, and was once again in the grasp of long-past terrors. He twisted and writhed under the covers, and outside, the children grew closer._

"Okay,_" whispered Jean. "_I'm going to open the door, and then we go in and go up to his bed._"_

"And start singing?_" This was from Scott. Jean thought for a moment, eyes zoning out towards the dancing flames, and she answered:_

"Yeah, and start singing._" She turned to Jimaine. "_You know 'Happy Birthday' in English, right?_" _

"Ja._"_

"Cool. Let's go. One._" She put her hand to the cold brass sphere of Kurt's door. "_Two._" She hissed, and turned it. "_Three!_" the thick door was heftily pushed it open, before they all began to approach his bed, and burst out into enthused rounds of song._

"_HA-APPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!" They sang, and approached. The candles flickered with the breathy bursts of song in Jean's arms. They were yet to notice Kurt's positioning._

"_HA-APPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!" They neared the bed, and Scott stopped singing._

_Jimaine went pale._

"_HA-APPY BIRTHDAY DEAR KU-URT!" They found their way directly to him, and most, save for Kitty and Bobby and Rogue, had noticed how he thrashed in abject terror on his bed and spat out blood that wasn't there. They all watched as he clutched at air and whimpered out sleep-muddled pleas and cries. The noise grew and somehow reached his ears, and his eyes jerked open, stark and gold. He clutched the bed-sheets, his mind telling him he was in pain and his body tense beyond belief. In the dark, the only things he saw was the cake in front of his bed, the familiar waves of fire that flitted close, too close, illuminating both worried faced and stretched Cheshire grins to the point that their teeth and eyes glowed with menace and their skin was painted in dancing shadows that morphed before his eyes._

"_HA-APPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!" And then Kurt gasped, rolled his eyes back in his head, and promptly passed out._

* * *

_Bobby stared at both Kurt and Evan, who was sitting up looking unbearably exasperated and rubbing his eyes in frustration. He looked directly at Scott and Rogue._

"'_the __**fuck**__ you do?" he mumbled out, angrily. They withdrew. "Urrrggghh..." He groaned, and then looked up. "He pass __**out**__?"_

"_Yu-huh."_

"_Are you a fucking moron?" Scott had to blink. Evan didn't swear often, and the sleepy outburst was enough to surprise the majority of friends. "I __**told**__ you he had weirdo nightmares. I __**told**__ you just how freaky he gets at night. So you come in, in the middle of the night, with everyone else to see? What the hell, man?" Rogue shuffled her feet and looked down at Kurt's unconscious form. Jimaine was deep in thought and Kitty looked properly sympathetic. _

_Jean was the only one who was displeased. "Am I the only one who didn't know Kurt was having nightmares?"_

"_Nope." Said Evan. "Only I knew, Rogue knew, and Scott knew. I think Logan, too."_

"_Why didn't you tell me?" she hissed, screechingly. Evan shrugged and pulled his blanket back so that it cradled his legs._

"_None of yo' business." _

"_What are they about?" she asked, looking to Jimaine of all people. The blonde girl blinked in her direction and squinted._

"_None of my business either." Evan coolly replied, and someone blew out the candles and left them in darkness._

"_So... what should we do now?" Kitty asked, clutching her bundle to her chest. _

"_Go downstairs, you might as well get some breakfast." He looked over at the alarm clock at the corner of the room. "Kurt'll wake up in like 10 minutes anyways." Awkwardly, the mutants began to agree and carried off their cake and parcels with a slump, sleepily. Jimaine stayed behind for the shortest time before Evan convinced her too to go to bed. As predicted, Kurt did wake up ten minutes later and then sunk back into his pillow with an audible groan._

"_Happy late birthday, man." Evan deadpanned. "We got cake." Kurt pulled the pillow over his face._

"_Ach... Kill me now..." he groaned. "Bitte, _please _tell me zhat I did not pass out in front of zhe entire mansion?"_

"_Sorry, dude." He answered, truly sympathetic. "You kind of did."_

"Wunderbar_..." There was a pause. "Vhat should I do?"_

"_I don't know, Kurt, I'm not good with this stuff. Just... go downstairs, tell them it was about being chased by robots or something normal instead of demon-hunters or whatever."_

_Kurt's eyes snapped fully open beneath the pillow. _Huh?_ "Excuse me?" Evan swore._

"_Nothing, just go downstairs. We... made cake. Kinda."_

_Kurt tried to shrug it off but made his way to the bathroom with uneasy gait in his steps. When he was done, and 'ported down, the candles of the cake were lit anew and birthday rituals were in progression again. Jimaine immediately latched on to him and kissed his cheek before his friends tentatively burst out into 'Happy Birthday', and finished it through, all the way to the end, before Kurt blew out all his candles, and they clapped in obligatory applause before serving the lumpy treat as breakfast._

_He poked it with a fork at first, watching somewhat confusedly as the others scarfed down the questionable treat with what appeared to be enjoyment of the highest calibre. Tentatively, he scooped some of the substance up, brought it to his mouth, and chewed._

"_Zhis... is... good!" he announced, and dug in. Everyone watched him and spoke carefully, treading water._

"_Yeah... we, like, cleaned it up before serving it." Kitty indicated Jimaine and herself and Jimaine came over to Kurt, scooping a section of his cake with her own fork and popping it into her mouth._

"_Don't you __**love**__ how it looks, Kurti?" she asked, smiling. The other X-men were starting to relax. He rolled his eyes unnoticeably._

"_Ja, Jimaine." He sarcasmed. "It's _beautiful_." Then she laughed, walked over to his other side, and before she passed, kissed him full on the mouth._

_Kitty pursed her lips and blinked a couple times. Evan slowly grinned. Most stared in vaguely amused, shocked surprise at Jimaine, who was making coffee in the kitchen, and then finally at Kurt, who was eating the cake the same way he had been eating it for the duration of the breakfast. When he finally looked up, he furrowed his brows and went:_

"_**Ja?**__" _

"_Um..." Scott managed._

"_Was?"_

"_It's just..." this from Jean. "You never said Jimaine was your __**girlfriend**__. You said she was like a __**sister...**__" Kurt looked back at Jimaine, and then, with unprecedented perkiness said: "Oh." He adjusted his position on the chair until he was comfortable and then raised his shoulders in a half-shrug, ready for an epic explanation. "Jimaine is... I grew up vith her, ja? She vas alvays my best friend, and eventually grew into somezhing more... and she's really like a type ov sister, friend... girlfriend, I guess you could say, if you wanted to. Just... Jimaine. No vord for it, really. I've never been asked." He glanced up at the X-men sheepishly and completed his shrug. Not a very epic explanation._

_Jean said: "Aw... so... she's kind of like a sister-girlfriend?" Kurt frowned at those implications._

"_I vouldn't say __**zhat.**__ I don't know, Jean, like I said. I've never been asked."_

* * *

HBD?_ Kurt wondered aloud, staring at his locker. _Was ist HBD?_ For across his locker, on top of the multicoloured collage of streamers and wrapping paper, there were three glimmering letters stuck onto the door. They were H, B, and D. They were followed by an exclamation mark. There were also several signed exclamations of 'Happy Birthday' and the like, and a few phone numbers, one again from Taisa. Below this festive display, someone had decided to glue several Wunderbars. _I will never understand American culture... _Kurt slid his thumb around his lock, bringing it to the numbers. He rarely left it locked when he'd first come to this school, not seeing why he should feel the need to so vigilantly protect items of so little value until he'd opened it and had seen 'KURT, LOCK YOUR LOCKER' __**carved**__ on the inside of his door. It had been Evan, but he still locked it now, every day._

_He opened it and looked inside, and then smiled. Little notes had fallen to the floor of his locker, evidently passed through the cracks. He picked them up one at a time and leaned somewhat against his opened locker door. They were all generic, handwritten, some from students he hardly knew, and somehow touching. He rather preferred these students to the ones that hadn't helped __**then**__... Nobody helped then... _

_He shook his head and placed the notes in a neat pile inside the top shelf of his locker, feeling a bit bipolar and jumpy. The long walk to class would clear his head of bad thoughts. Then he grabbed a binder and shut the door again._

"_Hey, fuzzy!" _

_Kurt screamed, jumped back, dropped his binder, and retreated into a flighty crouch, half-defensive, half escape-ready, before he saw the confused expression on her face. _

_It was Kitty._

_He stood up._

_Then he blushed._

"_Sorry, Kätzchen. You... scared me." She quirked a thin brow at that and secretly analyzed him, being too-nice, still wary of the clip of nightmare she'd seen. He could always tell when people were being too-nice._

"_Sorry, fuzzy. I was just, like, going to meet you for first period." With no warning, he had a random, awkward meld, a flash of memory-phantom mixing with Kätzchen just for a moment, before cruel smiles turned back into perfect teeth and stakes and knives back into textbooks clutched to a flat chest. Random, chilling._

"_Ah... sure, Kätzchen. To... _Englisch_, ja?"_

"_Ja." She giggled, walking off, a veil of his meld around her still as she sought down the halls with booming steps._

_He pulled a chocolate bar off his locker and followed._

* * *

"_Mister Wagner." He looked up. Here was Mrs. Jayne, the very pleasant history teacher and choir instructor who both liked him and liked to pick on him, in both._

"_Ja?"_

"_The answer, if you please." Eyes scanned over the chalkboard. _

"_1842."_

"_That is correct."_

_After a while:_

"_Mister Wagner."_

"_Ja?"_

"_The answer?"_

"_ach... Alaska?"_

"_Good."_

_..._

"_Mister Wagner."_

"_Zhe 29__th__."_

_..._

"_Mister Wagner."_

"_Zhe residency tax." He said without looking up._

"_No, Mr. Wagner—"_

"_Zhe..." he scanned the few notes he took frantically._

"_Kurt, look up."_

_He did. Then pursed his lips. The interesting thing about Bayville high school was that some classes seemed too coincidental to have had the students be randomly selected. For instance, Alexandra Jayne's history class. It was composed of his entire choir, and a few other students. All of them were now looking in his direction, with grins on their faces. Then Paul McCartney's 'Birthday Song' began to play._

_Then the choir kids began to sing. And Kitty, not in the choir, was doing it too, completely unsurprised._

_Kurt's lips parted into a grin of his own. When all the nightmares were done, he'd remember this as a good birthday. And perhaps even the memories weren't so bad after all. They just made new friends seem all the better._

* * *

"_How was school?" asked Jimaine with far more enthusiasm then necessary, running into him as he walked through the door. She gave him a deep hug and turned off his watch for him with an absent motion of the hand._

"_Good." He laughed, and then pushed her back with a tail around the waist. Her hair was a crown and glowing with slivers of sunlight while being frizzed into her face and matted with what jean called 'bed-head'. Her pyjama shirt consisted of a bad pun in cheery lettering and nail polish stains and her pants were bleak, pale rags that were once green. She wore socks that were inches thick with fuzz. Recently woken up, he guessed. "Vhy so... hyper?" he asked. "And still in your pyjamas?"_

"_I am 'hyper'," she answered calmly, brushing away some frazzled hair. "because we get to have your birthday party now!" _

_Kurt was confused._

"_Jimaine, ve just had it zhis morning. You vere zhere." She waved a hand._

"_That didn't count. __**Here **__we have __**presents.**__"_

"_Presents and no cake?" he joked. "Vhy didn't ve just save zhe cake for now, zhen, if ve vere going to have a party?"_

"_Oh, we got a caike." Said Rogue. She was being too-nice. But only slightly so._

"_You __**do?**__ You made anozher one?"_

"_No..." Rogue blushed. "We bought one this tahme." _

"_Rogue... you didn't have to do zhat."_

"_Cut the clichés, Kurt. There's presn'ts ta be had."_

* * *

_There was, as stated, presents to be had. Each X-man had placed a parcel of sorts on the couch, and now they lay there in a big coloured heap. Kurt eyed them anxiously, but his thoughts had drifted to a darker place in a conversational lull. Scott had asked if he was 'feeling better now' in a way that was far too-nice, and he'd shrugged it off but now was brought back to a... murk. A murk of memory interspersed with random thoughts. He was, as Kitty would say: 'totally spacing out.'_

_Jean was, however, feeling out of the loop. She liked to be informed on everything, and that included various screwed up parts of the X-men. And __**that**__ included, in Evan's own blunt phrasings: "weirdo nightmares and how freaky he gets at night." She looked across to Kurt now, fiddling with her drink, and saw him staring blankly somewhere. _Thinking._ She could identify that facial expression by now. But what was he thinking _about?_ She looked over at him again, took a breath, and thrust herself headfirst into Kurt Wagner's mind. _

* * *

_Shields went down smoothly, cleanly, and her head was suddenly a torrent of foreign thoughts and memories and she reeled as they took over her and she felt the great power that came with telepathy; fire, flight. She saw various fragments and felt them too, fragments of an unfocused thought pattern._

Heat, blood, circus tents, blonde hair, rough touches and soft touches.

_One memory played out for her in clips and it was archived in Kurt's mind: _Dämonbuch._ She found in the midst of the psycho-chaos that it took place after an ice-cream shop... She saw him struggle and sob in agony to get to the door to let Margali in. They she __**became**__ him and felt the reassurance that comes with mama returning home. _

*clip*

Head pressed into her plush softness, the warmth between her breasts like when he was little.

some more comfort as she stroked his/her hair.

*clip*

Needle diving skilfully in and out of blue flesh, screams for her to stop suppressed because of the knowledge that this was a necessary evil; and a gentle voice: "Fast fertig..." Almost done...

*clip*

Mostly pain as she kneeled, wetness and no judgement in her eyes. "_Was erzählst du mir nicht, liebe?_" What aren't you telling me, love?

*clip*

Nearly crippling shame as he/she knew he/she had to admit his/her transgression. The floor the only thing seen through blurred vision.  "_Ich biß ihn... mit mein Giftzähnen."_ _I bit him... _The nausea reoccurring as a balloon against the back of his throat. With my fangs. "Ich trank ihren blut." I drank his blood.

*clip*

The sensation of rot and then the taste of vomit.

*clip*

Warm, comforting covers. Stark white bandaging. Screaming into the pillow and then collapsing, exhausted, into it and pouring out his/her heart and soul.

"_Ich möchte nur verstehen, warum! Ich möchte weiβen warum all die Männer die mich__sehen, rufen Sie mich an ein... Ungeheuer. Ich nur möchte __**weiβen**__, mama, nur... __**warum**__?__" _I just want to understand 'why'? He/she calls, trembling. I want to know why all the men who see me call me a... monster. I just want to **know**, mama, just **why**? He/she cannot contain her grief and then there is the sensation of mama pulling him/her in for a gentle hug. He/she's stained her shirt. **Sorry, mama...**

*clip*

Mama looks a bit tired. And a bit sad. "Du machst weiβen, Kurti?" You want to know? her voice is quiet and raw. Harsh but mindful of his wounds. Mama is never too-nice. Mama just knows words can hurt. "_Du wollst, dass ich Ihnen sagen, warum alle Dorfbewohner schauen dich an und denken, dass du ein Dämon?__"_ You want me to tell you why all those villagers look at you and think you're a demon? She deadpans, questioning. You want to understand why they all try to kill you? He/she does not flinch. He/she nods and his/her blood goes cold.

*clip*

Birthday dinner in bed. Feels luxurious; a rare treat and this isn't lost on him/her. Body still agonized. Ankles throbbing mercilessly with each heartbeat. A testament to a life of pain. He/she wonders what the scars will look like when they heal... Mama brings a book onto the bed. He/she stares at it. 

"Ich bin bereit, mama." I'm ready.

*clip*

His/her big blue finger points clumsily at the picture. It is labelled: **Ein Dämon und der Teufel.** Der Teufel is not what he/she is pointing at. "Das ist ein Dämon?" A small voice gasps. Eyes focus back on mama. "Das ist mich."

*clip*

"_Ich sehe aus wie genau ihn!__"_ I look exactly like him! "_Das ist, was ein Dämon aussieht? Deshalb versuchen sie, mich zu töten?_ Sie denken ich **bin** er?" This is what a demon looks like? That's why they try to kill me? They think I **am** him? He/she is fumbling over words, stressed. Blue fingers trace over drawn out tridactyl hands. He/she whispers.

"Ich bin wie nur er." I'm just like him.

In the next picture, where the vanquishing of the demon is shown, it bares its teeth as it is burned alive.

"_Nein, du bist es nicht__ , Kurti._" You're not. His response is ready and instantaneous.

"_Warum sehe ich genau so wie ihn?!_" Then why do I look exactly like him?! For once, mama has no answer.

*clip*

A hug. "Du bist nicht ein Dämon." A kiss.

*clip*

The sounds of Mama's grunts of effort as she scrubs blood from the floors below.

*clip*

"Ich bin nicht ein Dämon?"

*clip*

Picking up the book. Looking at the next picture of the demon. It is furry, has a tail, digigrade legs, the ears, the eyes, the fangs... Gold eyes go to the nearest mirror. 

**I am not a demon...** Eyes to the book.

*clip*

The third picture. The demon is drinking a man's blood. Eyes back to the mirror.

*clip*

**Am I?**

* * *

_Jean backed out of his mind suddenly but cautiously and as quickly as she could. He did not appear to have noticed. _

Whoa... _she thought, and then reconsidered her dislike of not knowing her teammates' problems. She went off to wash the phantom foreign memory of blood out of her mouth, and possibly with it, her pryer's urge to know more. _

_In the meantime, the table had been set up for what Xavier and Ororo called: 'X-Cake: II', and it was being eaten. Kurt had walked over and taken a seat there as Jean read his mind. At the other corner of the table, though, Scott was not hearing a noise._

"_Psssst." He continued to try to get his cake cut at the right angle._

"_**Pssssst.**__" Kitty whispered and h__e turned his head in her general direction._

_"Yeah?"_

_"What did you get him?"_

_"Who, Kurt?" Blue eyes rolled and then narrowed in sarcasm before small pink lips replied. _

_"Yes, Kurt. What did you get him?"_

_"Something with Evan together. You'll see. It's not that original... CDs." he paused for a minute. "And twenty bucks."_

_"Each?"_

_"Combined." he raised his chin. "What did you get?"_

"_Well, I, like... didn't know what to get, so I, like, asked Evan."_

"_And?"_

"_Well, he said that guys like useful stuff, but I also got it kinda personalized... a cup."_

"_A cup? Like..." he made vague drinking gestures with his hands. "just a cup?"_

"_It totally doubles as a beer stein." Kitty grinned. "And it's like, for Scorpios."_

"_Cool. What else?"_

_Kitty grinned again. "You'll see..."_

* * *

"_OK, Y'ALL COME IN HERE! NOW'S THA TAHME TA OPEN PRESENTS!" And at those magic words, an entire group of teenagers and students entered the room and sat on their knees on the carpeted floor like children. Rogue did the same and Jimaine began to hand Kurt the coloured parcels, one by one._

_The first was from Jean, and was a novel of some sort that Kurt vaguely remembered watching in movie form. He flipped through the pages, feeling nostalgic wind flutter his hair and fur and thanked Jean with a grin and read the back idly, nodding as he did so as she basked in a present well chosen._

_The next was from Bobby, and wrapped in a thin coat of soggy orange wrapping. Kurt fumbled with the knots to the point that it was almost embarrassing, and then the ribbon swirled open with a flourish. Inside, lacking all subtlety, was a dessert cookbook and a card. It __**was**__ a nice gift, though Kurt did not cook as a regular thing._

"_Dankeschoen, Bobby."_

_Though the look in Bobby's eyes suggested he might have to start._

"_You're welcome." The next gift was a box, with wrapping paper cut out carefully in the shape of the faces, and glued on, rather than actually wrapped, but with the appearance of a wrapped package. Kurt opened it with a smirk as Evan and Scott high-fived behind him._

"_**Oooohh...**__" he crooned, looking through the CD collection. "__**Aaaahh... **__Zhank you!" he called, turning to Scott and Evan, and giving a quasi-awkward 'man-hug' to each. The money he subtly pocketed, and neatly placed the box and envelope on the floor beside him as he waited for Jimaine to select the next gift. Evan watched as Kurt's eyes glowed with enthusiasm, now, and then turned his head to see what Jimaine had chosen._

_Poof. A brightly wrapped parcel from Rogue was placed into six eager fingers. It was surprisingly neatly done, yet the effect was ruined from the rough crinkling noise it made upon contact with oxygen and obvious strips of duct tape around the edges. This one, he casually ripped open with his teeth, and colour peeled backwards to reveal something that made Kurt's eyes glow wistful instead._

"_Ah know it's kinda cheesy, but..." _

_He shook his head, drawing in a breath._

"_Nein... Rogue... I love it." Inside the package had been this: A glass orb with a small stand attached to its bottom, and an intricate maquette inside. Inside was a circus, complete with patrons frozen in walking position here and there, holding little pink clouds of cotton-candy sculptures. The tents were bright and colourful, and the same colours Kurt remembered, and the gypsy tent had a line forming on the outside. There was even a trapeze outdoors like they had, towering over the circus like a guardian._

_Kurt shook it, and suddenly, it was winter in Winzeldorf again, when the snow crystals fell tranquilly to the ground._

"_I __**love**__ it." He repeated, and then gave her a hug. The globe was placed down onto the ground next to the box._

_Then he was surprised by the _teachers_ offering him a parcel. And it was a huge parcel, and was heavy in his arms. When he opened it, eyebrow quirked, there was a handmade 'coupon' to skip a 5:00am training session. Along with a few rocks. _

_He decided to keep the rocks too._

"_Who's left?" Kurt asked, looking at the remaining packages. There was one._

"_Like, just me." Replied Kitty, grabbing her own box...es. Kurt had to look twice. She had two boxes in her hand, one small, one about the size of a mug. "But... Jimaine can, like, go first." Jimaine looked hopefully at Kurt, who shrugged, and then she said:_

"_Wait right here." And rushed off to her room. She returned shortly with something behind her back and a smirk. Then she pulled it out with a flourish. Kurt gasped._

"_**Nein…**__ you __**didn't**__…" Jimaine waved the cassette around with grace and poise and arrogance. _

"_Yes. I did." She tossed the cassette behind her to Scott, who fumbled for it and then held it in his hands._

"_The Incredible…" he looked up. "Nightcrawler? July Fourteenth?" _

* * *

_Jimaine put the cassette in, ignoring Kurt`s protests. _

"_Ve really don't need to see zhis..." he announced, trying subtly to pull the plug out of the television with his tail. Rogue grabbed it and pulled him back, grinning._

"_Oh, ah think we do." He sighed and then tried to not fidget as he perched on the couch top. _

"_Nein, I really zhink zhat you do not." Then he glared at Jimaine. "Vhy did you bring a tape? Vhere did you _get_ a tape?"_

_Jimaine then paused from trying to decipher the VCR, and gave Kurt a look that implied he was missing a vital function in his brain. "Kurti, I bought one."_

"_From vhere?" he boggled._

"_From the Gelhaar souvenir shop!"¸_

"_WAS? Zhey still sell zhose? Mein __**gott**__." _

"_Ja, along with the dolls and the autographed t-shirts." Kurt laughed at that._

"_People still buy zhem? Who autogravs zhem?"_

"_Stefan, mostly." _

_Kurt exploded into laughter. Bobby, who was sitting on the couch normally, shifted his weight and looked up, meeting Kurt's foot before he craned his head to look the German boy in the eyes._

"_Um... you wanna explain that conversation to us who are still sane?" Kurt continued laughing and then managed to control himself to the level of bursting giggles. _

"_Ve are talking about zhe circus." Kurt said. "I told you about zhe circus, ja?" Bobby remembered some vague mentioning of growing up in a circus, and catching a glimpse of gymnastics prowess, but that was all._

"_Well, you told us something about a circus... you never said there were tapes an dolls of you!" Kurt shrugged. _

"_You never asked."_

"_Just how famous were you?" Jean asked. Jimaine snorted._

"_Kurti? He was the leading trapeze act!" She looked to him now. "You never told any of your friends?"_

"_Zhey never asked."_

"_The... __**leading**__ trapeze act?!?"_

"_Shhh!" Jimaine waved her arms. "I got it to work. Look!" Truly, the screen was now alight with colour, and she pressed play on the VCR before scuttling back towards the couch. The scene started out with black, and then a spotlight shone on Nightcrawler himself, striking a melodramatic pose. He was around eleven, shorter, thinner, and wearing a variant of his current uniform, with much brighter colours. Kurt slapped a palm onto his forehead and ran it down his face._

"_All right, zhat's enough, ja?"_

"_Nein!" shouted Jimaine._

"_But it`s embarrassing..."_

"_Shh!" _

_The clamour died down on the stage and the camera stopped its shaking. The lights dimmed and everyone leaned forwards in anticipation as Kurt jumped off of the platform he was on, and flew._

* * *

"_Whoa..."_

"_I _agree_..."_

_Several heads turned in Kurt's general direction, with eyes trained on the screen as if they meant to turn their head all the way but reconsidered halfway through. Kurt, meanwhile, was peeking out from between Jimaine and Kitty and trying to remember that night and that routine, before he remembered with some sort of chagrin that all his friends were watching this with him. _

_Jimaine was watching the seemingly inhuman twists and flips with a kind of smirk, seeing her embarrassing birthday gift had its desired effect, but also with a strange sense of pride. She had been there, in the audience for that one, and remembered starting to save up to buy the tape so she might both gloat to others of her talented best friend and embarrass him with it one day. Jimaine continued working and snuggled deeper into blue fur. This was working._

_Kitty however, on the other edge of the couch was on a different train of thought, having relinquished her mind to less intellectual parts of her psyche. There was essentially one primary thought at the front of her brain, one she didn't know she had._

Whoa... like, that uniform... is really**tight**.

_Mainly, she found herself figuratively drooling over the somewhat recent video recording, and enjoying the unexpected contraction and flex of muscle as it twirled and twisted, and bent itself over the obstacles. The uniform onscreen was effectively constraining enough to flatten down fur and wonderfully outlined the sculpted form that lay beneath. She was suddenly all too aware of every movement that that same possessor of the figure made, and then turned a bright pink when fur tickled her arm and she felt muscle ripple underneath it as he shifted positions._

_When that part of the tape was done, there was a brief interlude of static, and then another performance began, this one with a much younger Kurt swinging. He was noticeably more amateurish, but a wonder and a thrall to watch all the same. Kitty found herself relaxing somewhat, but still hyperaware. Kurt was grinning nervously as he watched his younger self, and the other teens laughed in good natured humour, mindful of his embarrassment. _

_When the tape was over, they all gave their applause, and Kurt even gave a bow, clearing his face of an embarrassed flush that went largely unnoticed. _

"_Zhank you, zhank you." He laughed. "Nightcrawler is done for zhe night."_

"_That... was cool." Scott concluded._

"_Zhank you."_

"_How old are you in that tape?" Kurt's face fell the slightest amount._

"_Eleven."_

"_**Cool.**__" He said again. That seemed to be the unanimous classification._

_Then Kitty, controlling her strangely untimely and rather unladylike thoughts, decided to speak up._

"_Kay, it was cool... __**but**__, now, it's like, time for __**my**__ gift."_

* * *

_Kurt shook the first parcel close to his ear, to hear only the muted ruffling of Styrofoam. He frowned._

"_It's breakable..." He shook it again. "Not a cube..." He looked to Kitty. "I don't know."_

"_Open it then." She said, and he tore into the paper before opening the box, with some awkwardness. He pulled out the object inside, and then gently traced his fingers over the ornate designs and raised ridges on smooth material that so reminded him of his skin. The cup was large and heavy, and the handle was wide enough for him to put booth wide fingers through it. It was a muted auburn-red, and the golden patters sparkled over it, creating the design for a scorpio._

_He saw the attachment with it, the silver top that mimicked a stein, and he picked that up as well, cradling it in his fingers. The gift was oddly... homey and he smiled at it._

"_Danke, Kätzchen." He said with sincerity. He leaned in closer to give her the somewhat obligatory hug, but she pulled away. _

"_Nuh-uh, fuzzy. Not yet. There's one more." She stuck the second box into his stomach and it fell into his lap. This one, he looked at with a sense of eagerness, and tore into the wrappings with all the vigour of a child. Kitty looked excited for him to open it, and it was wrapped slightly neater than the other. He carefully cut a slit in the side of the wrapping with the blade of a pair of scissors, brought by his friends, and extracted the box, and lifted the lid. Then he reached inside it and picked up the gift that lay there in the warm cardboard casing. __Kurt looked at the object, and furrowed his brow at the finding that it seemed to resemble no more than a metal cigarette with a button on the side. He then looked to Kitty, confused, not understanding her gift._

_"Click the button." she said._

_"Vy?"_

_"Just do it."_

_So he pressed his thumb to the button, applied force, and then jumped and fumbled when the top of the 'cigarette' burst forth a spew of fire._

_It took mere seconds for his mind to become a mess._

_He dropped it on the ground, but the fire had been gone by then, and then he heard a peculiar crackling and Jean screamed. He looked down, and watched the hand he'd pressed with being devoured by an orange mouth, and he went back to dark corners and his vision blurred. He couldn't figure out, in those seconds, what to do and merely stood there, feeling the blood drain from his face._

_There was a sudden burst of pain as it went through the fur and he regained some functions and ran, slipping and dazed, to the sink and groaned under the shock of the cold water. He looked to it then, and noted the charred, crispy ashes clinging to his skin around the knuckles and some of the palm. Jimaine came over immediately, looking it over and mumbling words to relax him or herself or both._

"_There's not much to the skin... but I can't tell." Brown eyes met gold. "Does it hurt?"_

"_Little." He croaked out, staring at his hand. Storm approached, and looked at the fur there as the others stood in a daze near the television. _

"_Oh, dear." She said, taking in Kurt and quickly diagnosing shock. "Kitty, if you please, phase us to the Medlab."_

"_Like, of __**course**__..." the girl ran over._

_And then something strange happened._

_Kurt stumbled away from her, and cringed into Jimaine and then looked over at the surprised brunette with wide, trapped eyes. He stared at Kitty as one stares into the abyss._

_His hand was hurt._

_Fire._

_Just like before._

_But not just like before... it was someone else._

_Kätzchen._

_His blood went cold._

_Kätzchen had burned him._


	14. Chapter 14: Abilities and Capabilities

**A/N: Hey everyone, I want to start with saying thanks to Nightcrawler's Shadow again for being so speedy and awesome with her translating. She is the best beta ever. **** And to Caprichoso for all his help, without which this chapter would sound really strange at some points. Also, its a little different than my other ones... and considerably shorter, so sorry about that. Now, on a side note, my other story only has 5 reviews and it has been up there for 2 months... so I'd like about 10 before 2010. Just saying, if anyone's interested; I felt like shameless advertising. Now without further ado:**

* * *

_The circus was alight with life and the energy that sparked through the air, setting fervour in children's eyes and spreading from person to person with the speed of a breath. The echo of applause still richly flooded the circus lands, and Kurt, exhausted and exhilarated, sat in his trailer and happily drowned in it. There was the satisfied air of another show well done; another day well spent. At eleven years old and just past five feet tall, the lead trapeze artist of Gelhaar lounged proudly in the small, opaque hideaway that bore his title like its own, read fan mail over for the second, third, fourth time in a row and waited for the winter's sun to set. _

_The acrobat and showman in him pressed against his chest and urged him to go greet the hordes of fans as it did each time, and Kurt itched to obey. But the damaged boy inside him whispered: __**'No... they'll hurt you...'**__so due to that along with mama's careful instruction, he merely waited for them to disperse. By now, it was the heavy black of night, and the smell of half-formed dew and burning from the torches used as night-lights filled the air. The few people he'd seen through his little window had dispersed a half an hour ago and hearing blissful nothingness outside, he pushed open his door, risking no protection from the frosty cold, stepped out onto the snowy grass, locked it and turned the corner to go home._

_Around the edge of the trailer, he turned and stopped short. For the briefest moment, he fumbled for his thoughts and footing as he was assaulted with excited loud whispers, camera flashes, and torches meant to lead the way. Kurt felt breath hitch in his throat and then just like that, he could feel his body freeze. He could feel his heart stop beating, and his eyes stop blinking and his blood turn to ice in his veins. Some part of him said __**run**__ but he couldn't, because another part of him was eyeing the torches and retreating into a little ball, equally loud inside him and equally demanding. A third part of him was listening to the mob with a calculating eye, watching for the first person to __**realise**__. Together, they made his body still, paralyzed him, too many trying to get through the door between though and action, and none managing to squeeze past the rest. _

_IchbinnichteinDämonIchbinnichteinDämonIchbinnichteinDämonIchbinnichteinDämon..._

_It wasn't working, because that had lost its full effect years ago, and then the small part of him, the damaged boy in his chest, had a small command of his own, weak and loud as a whisper but still audible inside of him. _

No.

_He was pressed against the trailer, trying to pray without the words dying on his tongue or find the strength to run even despite his entrapment, but both attempts were quick to fade. He couldn't stop staring at that fire, staring at the flames that licked back and forth, back and forth and caressed the night air like the long tongue of a gorgon. He could see the sweat on the knuckles of the men who wielded it, and the slowly changing expressions on their faces. Changing into..._

**No.**

_His mind went ten places at once, and there was combat training trying to bubble up through the soup of his thoughts, but that voice, the resisting voice was growing louder. The men whispered something amongst themselves, and Kurt's ears picked up their tones and the way their tongues slapped the roof of their mouths with harsh speech. _

**NO.**

_At long last, one of the men came towards him, and Kurt could already see that expression in his eyes, half-formed. The expression that led to pain. A wave of fire flitted close to his face, and his eyes filled orange and then one image shot through his mind, the demon burning at the stake, the demon that was __**him**__ to them burning, fangs bared. Then the boy inside him, the boy borne of pain and blood and hate, the broken child that lived piece by piece in each scar, in each tear, sprang forwards and took over him, and he could feel himself more __**aware**__ than he had ever been. _

"_Nein." __He said at first, barely a puff of air. _

"_Was?" __The man asked, voice already twisted with what would soon be hate, too soon._

"_**NEIN!!**__" __Kurt bellowed at the top of his voice, watching them cringe and then recoil with those expressions, and he screamed at the top of his voice as something raw and animal awoke in him for the first time. He felt something pulling him from every direction, a force powerful and disorienting, and purely his, and he felt his nose leak with blood from the pressure and drip into his mouth as he screamed. The taste of sulphur made him want to retch as it filled him through the nose, mouth, ears and there was pain, like something had awoken in him that had been asleep for a very long time..._

_He finally appeared on his safe hill from which he came home from school and then it was over, and Kurt grasped the solid land now beneath him like it was his long-time lover and tears and blood stained it like dew. There was green and white and red and purple and blue and too much of it, and it was everywhere until Kurt spewed blood and bile on the grass before rolling down the hill and finally, there was just black. He awoke what must have been seconds later, and looked at his hands, smelling the sulphur on them..._

_The brimstone._

_**Gott help me, it's true... Mama was wrong.**_

_His hands quaked as he stared at them, unseeing, and then closed his eyes again, running purely on adrenaline, and tried to do it once more. He felt the pull and tried to hold onto the nothingness around him, and then he appeared, in front of Margali._

_She turned with the most utterly confused expression Kurt had ever seen, and reached out a tentative hand._

"_Kurti?"_

"_Du warst falsche, mama." __You were __**wrong.**_

"_...Was?" __Margali licked her lip.__ "Was meinst du damit? Wie hast du das getan?" __What do you mean? She asked. How did you do that?_

"_Oh, Hast es dir gefallen?" __he said, voice close to tears and harder and louder than he'd ever spoken. Did you like it?__ "Ich kann es wieder tun." __I can do it again. He reappeared behind her, and she turned with a start, the only thing from him she'd ever feared. Then she inhaled and grimaced, and readied to speak._

"_Das Geruch ist Schwefel." __he snapped, 'That smell is brimstone', and hot liquid streamed down his face. __"Schwefel! Verstehst du?! Hast du gesehen, was ich tat es einfach?" __Do you understand?! Do you see what I just did? Margali opened her mouth, but she was interrupted again, as he appeared in front of her and the sulphur stung her nose._

"_**Schwefel**__, mama!"__ angry, anguished, afraid. __"Das Ding kommt aus der Hölle. Warum ich riechen wie die Hölle, mama?" __That thing comes from hell. Why do I smell like hell,mama?_

_His voice rose and his feet went numb in the snow. __"WARUM ICH RIECHEN WIE DIE HÖLLE?"_

"_Nein, Kurti, nicht—" _

"_Warum hast du lassen nicht nur sie mich töten?"__he blurted. Why didn't you just let them kill me? __"Ließ sie töten ihre Dämon?__"__Let them kill their demon?!_

"_Nein, Kurti."__ She commanded. __"Sage niemals so __**etwas **__wieder." __Never say __**anything**__ like that again._

"_Warum?" __he iced, deathly quiet. Margali felt her heart quicken in her chest._

"_Sag es." __she commanded. Say it. __"Sag: Ich bin night ein Dämon. __**Jetzt.**__" __Now. He met her eyes, cold, pained._

"_Nein."_

"_Du bist nicht ein—" __she tried to salvage, but he disappeared again, leaving her to fall to her knees in the pure white snow._

* * *

Jimaine's dream was ripped out from under her by the nimble fingers of noise as a slight stumble in her room was reluctantly picked up by her ears through unconsciousness. She slid one eye open and mumbled as she groped, none too gracefully, for the strands of hair that her fallen onto her face.

"Was?" she managed, before the memory of where she was flitted to the surface of her mind. "Is someone there?"

Moonlight flitted in through the window, and a familiar silhouette made itself noticeable in the dark silence.

"Kurti?"

The silhouette was trembling.

"Kurti, why are you not asleep?" She asked, bothered more by that question than why he was in her room at all. Bright eyes, highlighter-yellow from agitation, darted back and forth as he shifted his weight. He was not quite sure himself, what brought him here to Jimaine's room at some unholy hour, but it felt **safe.** He needed to feel safe.

"I vas." He answered simply and with a shaky voice. He trembled, trembled, shook. Jimaine awoke somewhat and clutched her head before she moved so that her pink, amorphous t-shirt draped over her like a tent. Her angel expression took on a more aware concern.

"Schlechtem Träume?" she whispers, curling her bare legs somewhat closer to her chest. _Bad dreams?_

Kurt practically convulsed.

"Ja." He stood there for a moment more, before Jimaine's expression softened, fully awake and morphed into a small, warm smile with too many things in her eyes to be counted and labelled. She moved over to the edge of her mattress and then pulled back the thick covers over empty space.

For a moment, Kurt looked at them without really seeing, then trailed his eyes over her, the warm and inviting covers and then slowly and gratefully sunk in. Jimaine turned around and he pressed his front against her back, letting the combined heat from their bodies and the insulated covers slowly dull his quaking to a nervous tick. He wrapped his arm around her waist as she draped hers back over his back, and his tail found a warm spot around her legs in an effort to crawl inside her skin and disappear.

"Ich liebe dich." She said, not knowing or caring how or in which way, but letting the truth of that statement envelop them both. "Du weiβt das, Kurti." He buried his face into her soft shoulder, then withdrew.

"Ich weiβ."

After a pause: "And its not true what the nightmares say." She said, tightening herself around him. "Stop listening to them." Her body was a quilt, and he immersed himself in her scent, her touch.

"I _can't_..." he croaked, admittedly. She kissed his hand in a twist of the body, trying to reassure, and then his arm, and the spot of flesh just below lips.

"You **can...**" she whispered with her lips pressed to his ear. They perked immediately, and he felt his breathing increase. Panicking, he shifted. "I'll help you." She breathed. He stared at her soft hair and felt her warm arms around him, everywhere, just _Jimaine_ wrapped around him. She moved against him, and then he bit his lip, sweating, almost drawing blood. He closed his eyes, desperate and then she felt him grow against her. Surprised, she turned in his embrace, and he let go.

In the night he looked at her, ashamed and helpless, and blinked as a tear slid down the plane of his face.

"I'm **sorry**..." he strained out, utterly defeated. Unblushing, Jimaine looked down, and then back up to his face with that look on it, the look of raw doubt and unclassified _need._ With that, she knew what he needed, what she could and wanted to do. Licking her lips, she moved over him until her hair brushed down the sides of his temples. She leaned down, watching herself do it in shallow gold pools full of confusion and craving and slowly, she kissed him again, soft. She withdrew her lips with wet resistance, barely even gone from the kiss at all. The eyes knew what they wanted, now.

"Don't be..." she whispered, hot sigh of air into his mouth. "Never be..."

And with the presence of the wind and the silvery moon, Kurt proved somewhat to himself, and to the one person who had never doubted it, that he was indeed a man.


End file.
